Gustav Andreas Tammann

Gustav Andreas Tammann (24 July 1932 – 6 January 2019) was a Swiss astronomer and academic. He served as director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Basel; as a member of the European Space Agency Space Telescope Advisory Team, and as Member of Council of the European Southern Observatory. His research interests included supernovae and the extragalactic distance scale. Tammann was a former President of the International Astronomical Union Commission on Galaxies.

Tammann is the grandson of chemist-physicist Gustav Heinrich Tammann.

Academic career In 1972, he became a professor at the University of Hamburg. From 1977 until his retirement, he was a professor and head of the Astronomical Institute at the University of Basel.

His work focused mainly on the determination of the Hubble constant as well as the use of supernovae as cosmic distance indicators.

Accolades In 1991 Tammann became a full member of Academia Europaea, and in 1993 became a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 2000 he received the Albert Einstein Medal that is given for "outstanding scientific findings, works, or publications related to Albert Einstein" and the Tomalla Prize for his efforts in measuring the expansion rate of the universe and especially for his pioneering work using Supernovae as standard candles. In 2005 he received the Karl Schwarzschild Medal.

Publications Halleys Komet (1985)