Prof Hermann Bruck was a distinguished astronomer who had a profound influence on the conduct of this science in Ireland during his 10-year stay here. His death on March 4th closes a chapter of our history that links him both to the Dunsink Observatory and to the then Taoiseach, Mr de Valera.
Always associated with the advancement of astronomy, he worked in the Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory. At the same time he belonged to the famous Physics Seminar in Berlin whose members included no fewer than five Nobel prizewinners, including Albert Einstein, Max Von Laus and Erwin Schrodinger.
Under threat from the Nazis, he left Germany for Italy in 1936 and became involved with the newly-established Vatican Observatory.
Later he served at the Cambridge University Observatory and was director at Dunsink for a decade before completing his career in astronomy after an 18-year stint as Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh and Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
Hermann Alexander Bruck was born in August 1905, the only child of Hermann Heinrich Bruck, an officer of the Prussian army who was killed in action in 1914 at the battle of Lodz. Young Hermann attended the Kaiserin Augusta Gymnasium in Charlottenburg, an academy famed for its teaching of Greek, Latin and mathematics.
He studied at the universities of Bonn and Kiel and gained his doctorate in theoretical physics in Munich in 1928, where he worked under the physicist, Arnold Sommerfeld. Soon after, Prof Bruck was invited to participate in the Physics Seminar.
All of this came to an abrupt end for Prof Bruck, who like so many scientific contemporaries, was forced to flee Germany in 1936 under threat from the Nazis. He converted to Catholicism in 1935 and found refuge with the Jesuits in Italy a year later. He was received into the church by Romano Guardini and Johannes Pinsk, two of the most distinguished theologians of the period.
After a year he left the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo to join Cambridge University Observatory where he spent the war years. He eventually became its assistant director and worked under Sir Arthur Eddington, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge for 30 years. Prof Bruck's sojourns in Ireland began in 1947 when, at the invitation of Mr de Valera, he was asked to become director of the Dunsink Observatory and a senior professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
He was delighted to join his old friend, Erwin Schrodinger, then Professor of Theoretical Physics at the institute, and Prof Bruck spent 10 happy years here. The observatory had fallen into disuse during the troubled years after the foundation of the State and de Valera had included its restoration amongst his projects at the close of the second World War.
Prof Bruck had a major impact on astronomy here, as indicated by Sir Francis Graham-Smith, Astronomer Royal in Britain from 1982-1990, who recounts: "The unification of astronomy in Ireland which has survived the Troubles was a triumph for Bruck. The particular collaboration was between Armagh and Dunsink and the Boyden Observatory in South Africa, which was set up by Bruck and handed over to the joint management of the Irish observatories. There is a recent echo of this development in the Canary Islands, where the two different parts of the island of Ireland work in complete collaboration with one another."
Yet another Nobel laureate, Sir Edward Appleton, then vice-chancellor of Edinburgh University, eventually coaxed Prof Bruck away from Dublin to join his institution as Regius Professor and Astronomer Royal. He remained in Edinburgh until his retirement in 1975.
The present Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, described Prof Bruck's contribution to Edinburgh in generous terms, stating that it was Prof Bruck who had transformed Edinburgh astronomy into the status of an internationally regarded department.
In retirement, he and his wife, who was also an astronomer of note, collaborated on a number of books including The Peripatetic Astronomer (1988) - a biography of Charles Piazzi Smyth, and The Story of Astronomy in Edinburgh (1983).
Throughout his travels and various appointments Prof Bruck retained his strong links with the Catholic church, serving as a long-term member of the 70-strong Pontifical Academy of Sciences. On his 90th birthday he was honoured by Pope John Paul II by being appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Gregory the Great in recognition of 60 years service to the church and 40 years as a member of the academy.
He was married twice, first in 1936 to Irma Waitzfelder who died in 1950 and in 1951 to Maire Conway whom he met while both of them were on the staff at Dunsink.
Prof Bruck is survived by his wife Maire; daughters Anne and Catherine; son, Andrew; and by his daughter Mary and son Peter from his first marriage to Irma Waitzfelder.
Prof Hermann Alexander Bruck: born 1905; died March, 2000