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Sidney Van den Bergh, OC, FRS is a retired Canadian astronomer.
Born in the Netherlands, son of businessman and politician Sidney James van den Bergh and grandson of Unilever co-founder Samuel van den Bergh, he showed an interest in science from an early age, learning to read with books on astronomy. In addition to being interested in astronomy, he also liked geology and archeology. His parents got him science books, a telescope, and a microscope, although they wished him to pursue a more practical career and only follow astronomy as a hobby. He went to Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1947–1948. He then attended Princeton University on scholarship where he received his A.B. in 1950. In December 1950, he was living in Columbus, Ohio and evidencing an interest in Astronomy. He obtained an M.Sc. from Ohio State University and a Dr. rer. nat. from the University of Göttingen.
He took a faculty position at Ohio State University from 1956-1958 before moving to Toronto in 1958 where he spent the first part of his career at the David Dunlap Observatory of the University of Toronto. At the DDO, he led innovations that included: expansion of the facilities, utilization of computers, and multicolor photometry. While his areas of focus have included the moon and other parts of our solar system, he is best known for his work in extragalactic astronomy in which he has published original findings and reviews of nebulae, star clusters, variable stars, supernovae and more recently, an update to the estimated age of the universe. He discovered Andromeda II.
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