Homepage for Frank Verbunt

I am emeritus professor High-Energy Astrophysics of the Department of Astronomy / IMAPP of the Radboud University in Nijmegen.
This work also linked me to SRON - Utrecht, for my work on X-ray astronomy.
Em. Prof. Dr. Frank Verbunt
f.verbunt (at) astro.ru.nl
Huygensgebouw kamer 02.723
tel. +31-24-3653661

I divided my working time over
scientific research
teaching courses at the university,
popularizing astronomy
but now am mostly devoted to:

History of Astronomy

My research in this area fullfills a long-time wish and follows on a national
Master Astronomy course on the History of Astronomy that I gave with
four other teachers in 2004, 2006, and in 2011: IAC History of Astronomy
and with Marc van der Sluys in Nijmegen in 2018.

With Rob van Gent, I investigated the accuracy of old star catalogues from
Ptolemaios, Ulugh Beg, Tycho Brahe, Cornelis de Houtman and Halley.
and more recently with Andreas Schrimpf the starcatalogue of Wilhelm IV,
Landgraf of Hessen-Kassel.

With Marc van der Sluys I showed that contrary to what
is stated in all history books, Halley did NOT discover
proper motion: Jacques Cassini did.

I am writing a technical book on the History of Astronomy
in the form of a course book for beta's.

Previous Research

My research started with neutron stars and white dwarfs in binaries,
then expanded to include single neutron stars (pulsars) in the galactic disk,
and then X-ray sources in globular clusters.
I worked on theory and observations.
My most recent papers, with Andrei Igoshev and Eric Cator,
deal with the correct (!) determination of pulsar velocities
from measurements of parallaxes and proper motions.
Much of my research was done with graduate students.
See list. The transition from research in modern astronomy to research
in the History of Astronomy is marked by my valedictory lecture
Astronomy as a human activity.

All of this has resulted in the following papers in refereed journals (CDS)

Teaching

Courses from previous years:
Het heelal: an introductory course on the universe for honours students
Leven van Sterren an introductory course on stellar evolution for 1st year physics students
Chapters in the history of astronomy an interuniversity Master course (with Jan Hogendijk and Teije de Jong)
Compact Binaries a Master course on compact binaries
Space Astrophysics introduction to data fitting (for 3rd yr)

Popularizing astronomy

To popularize astronomy I write articles (in Dutch) for lay journals, mostly Zenit),
As editor of Zenit I currently write a monthly column together with Ignas Snellen .
Some older articles are scanned: