Albert Bouwers

Albert Bouwers
Born(1893-05-23)23 May 1893
Dalen, Netherlands
Died22 January 1972(1972-01-22) (aged 78)
Hague, Netherlands
Alma materUniversiteit Utrecht
Known forInventing the meniscus telescope
Spouse(s)
Madelon Thérèse Elise Hooij
​
​
(m. 1923; div. 1946)​

Olga Winkler
​
(m. 1946⁠–⁠1972)​
Scientific career
FieldsOptical engineering
InstitutionsPhilips Laboratory
ThesisOver het meten der intensiteit van Röntgenstralen (On the Measurement of the Intensity of X-Rays) (1924)
Doctoral advisorLeonard Ornstein

Albert A. Bouwers (1893–1972) was a Dutch optical engineer. He is known for developing and working with X-rays and various optical technologies as a high-level researcher at Philips research labs. He is lesser known for patenting in 1941 a catadioptric meniscus telescope design similar to but slightly predating the Maksutov telescope.[1][2]

Biography

Bouwers was born in the town of Dalen in the Netherlands in 1893.[3][4] He obtained his Ph.D. from Utrecht University in 1924, with a dissertation entitled in Dutch Over het meten der intensiteit van Röntgenstralen.[5][6] He was also the director of the Philips Laboratory's X-ray department.[7]

Bouwers developed a night vision device for viewing in low light conditions, called the "night eye".[8] The design used a photosensitive layer of cesium and antimony in a cathode-ray tube, to brighten images by over 1,000 times.[8] Unlike active infrared systems, it did not require an infrared flashlight.[8] The design was initially produced by Olde Delft Optical Company in the Netherlands.[8]

Bouwers meniscus telescope

In August 1940,[9] Albert Bouwers built a prototype for a design for a wide field concentric meniscus telescope (patented February 1941)[9] similar to, and slightly predating, Russian optician Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov's 1941 Maksutov telescope.[1][2] War time secrecy kept Bouwers and Maksutov from knowing about each other's designs and Bouwers' design was not published until after World War II.[10][11]

Bouwers original design (based on an earlier catadioptric telescope, Bernhard Schmidt's "Schmidt camera")[1] had the spherical mirror and spherical "meniscus corrector shell" all with a common radius of curvature (a concentric or monocentric design) resulting in a perfectly spherical symmetry of the whole optical device. Like the Schmidt camera, the meniscus telescope has the aperture stop coincide with the center of curvature. It also shares the Schmidt's curved image plane. The design has an ultrawide field of view with no spherical aberration but does not correct chromatic aberration and was only suitable as a monochromatic astronomical astrographic camera working at a single wavelength of light.[1] Bouwers came up with a later design that used a cemented doublet to form the meniscus corrector shell to correct chromatic aberration.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d John F. Gills, Ph.D. (1998). "Evolution of the Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope". www.weasner.com. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  2. ^ a b Wilson, Raymond N. (3 September 2007). Reflecting Telescope Optics I: Basic Design Theory and its Historical Development. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 150. ISBN 978-3-540-40106-3. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  3. ^ "Biographical Dictionary of the Netherlands: 1880-2000". resources.huygens.knaw.nl (in Dutch). Huygens Institute. 12 January 2015. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  4. ^ Wilson, Raymond N. (3 September 2007). Reflecting Telescope Optics I: Basic Design Theory and its Historical Development. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 498. ISBN 978-3-540-40106-3. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  5. ^ Bouwers, A. (1924). "Over het meten der intensiteit van Röntgenstralen". Koonings. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  6. ^ "Albert Bouwers". The Mathematics Genealogy Project. North Dakota State University. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  7. ^ Boersma, Kees (1 March 2003). "Tensions within an Industrial Research Laboratory: The Philips Laboratory's X-Ray Department between the Wars". Enterprise and Society. 4 (1). doi:10.1093/e (inactive 7 November 2025). ISSN 1467-2227. Archived 8 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 23 September 2009. Retrieved 7 November 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2025 (link)
  8. ^ a b c d "Optics: The View in the Dark". TIME.com. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 7 November 2025. (account required)
  9. ^ a b King, Henry C. (1 January 2003). The History of the Telescope. Courier Corporation. p. 360. ISBN 978-0-486-43265-6. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  10. ^ Trigubov, Eduard; Petrunin, Yuri. "Dmitri Maksutov: The Man and His Telescopes". www.telescopengineering.com. Archived from the original on 3 January 2009. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  11. ^ Armstrong, E. B. (September 1950). "Geometrical Optics and the Schmidt Camera". Irish Astronomical Journal. 1 (2): 48. Bibcode:1950IrAJ....1...48A. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  12. ^ Schroeder, Daniel J. (27 September 1999). Astronomical Optics. Elsevier. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-08-049951-2. Retrieved 7 November 2025.

Further reading

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