Karl Gunnar Malmquist (21 February 1893 – 27 June 1982) was aSwedishastronomer.
Gunnar Malmquist was born inYstad, where he completed his secondary school education before matriculating at theLund University in 1911. He received his Ph.D. in 1921, was anamanuensis at theLund Observatory 1915-1920 and adocent from 1920. He continued to work at the observatory in Lund until 1929, was observator at theStockholm Observatory and taught at theStockholm University College 1930-1939, and was Professor of Astronomy at theUppsala University from 1939 until his retirement in 1959.
Malmquist was a student ofCarl Charlier at Lund and became one of the best known members of the so-called "Lund school" in statistical astronomy. His work in that field led, among other things, to his observation of theMalmquist bias.
As professor at theUppsala Astronomical Observatory he got interested inSchmidt telescopes and took the initiative, together withÅke Wallenquist, to get a large Schmidt telescope installed at Uppsala University'sKvistabergs Observatorium (Kvistaberg Observatory, 1964), at the time one of the largest Schmidt telescopes in the world with amirror of 135 cm and acorrector plate of 100 cm. He also arranged for the university to construct a Schmidt telescope and build a dome atMount Stromlo inAustralia in 1956, "The Uppsala Southern Station".
The asteroid1527 Malmquista was named after him.
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