Aaldert Hendrik Wapstra (24 April 1922,

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Nethe ...

– 2 December 2006,

Naarden Naarden () is a city and former municipality in the Gooi region in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It has been part of the new municipality of Gooise Meren since 2016. History Naarden was granted its city rights in 1300 (the only ...

) was a Dutch

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

. Wapstra studied physics at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollm ...

and obtained his PhD with the dissertation ''Decay schemes of Pb209, Bi207 and Bi214 and the binding energies of the heavy nuclei'' at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other bein ...

in 1953.Kors Bos, Wim Lourens, Joop Konij
In Memoriam, Aaldert Hendrik Wapstra
/ref> He became a full professor in 1955 at the department of experimental physics at the Technische Hogeschool, now the Technical University in Delft, Netherlands. On 18 March 1963 Wapstra entered the board of the IKO, now known as

NIKHEF Nikhef is the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics that performs research in particle physics and astroparticle physics. Amongst others, it is a research partner of the CERN institute in Switzerland and a member of the European Gravitat ...

, as the scientific director of nuclear

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter ...

. He became the director in 1971, succeeding Van Lieshout, where he continued on until 1982. He retired in 1987. Wapstra is renowned for his work on the Atomic Mass Evaluation, in the beginning together with

Josef Mattauch Josef Mattauch (21 November 1895 – 10 August 1976) was a nuclear physicist and chemist. He was known for the development of the Mattauch-Herzog double-focusing mass spectrometer, for his work on the investigation of isotopic abundances using mass ...

at the

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Otto Hahn Institute; german: Max Planck Institut für Chemie - Otto Hahn Institut) is a non-university research institute under the auspices of the Max Planck Society (German: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) in ...

and later on with his colleague Georges Audi at

Université de Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (French: ''Université Paris-Sud''), also known as University of Paris — XI (or as Université d'Orsay before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, in ...

. For this work he obtained the SUNAMCO medal of the

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

(IUPAP) in September 2004.

Publications

* * * Everling, Friedrich; König, L. A.; Mattauch, Josef H. E.; Wapstra, Aaldert H.; ''Relative Nuclidic Masses'', Nuclear Physics, 18, 529 (1960) * * * * * * Audi, Georges; Wang, Meng; Wapstra, Aaldert H.; Kondev, Filip G.; MacCormick, Marion; Xu, Xing; and Pfeiffer, Bernd; ''The AME2012 atomic mass evaluation (I). Evaluation of input data, adjustment procedures'', Chinese Physics C36, 1287 (2012) * Wang, Meng; Audi, Georges; Wapstra, Aaldert H.; Kondev, Filip G.; MacCormick, Marion; Xu, Xing; and Pfeiffer, Bernd; ''The AME2012 atomic mass evaluation (II). Tables, graphs and references'', Chinese Physics C36, 1603 (2012)

References

Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wapstra, Aaldert 1922 births 2006 deaths 20th-century Dutch physicists Dutch nuclear physicists Academic staff of the Delft University of Technology Utrecht University alumni University of Amsterdam alumni Scientists from Utrecht (city)