Heinrich Carl Friedrich Kreutz (September 8, 1854 – July 13, 1907) was a Germanastronomer, most notable for his studies of the orbits of severalsungrazing comets, which revealed that they were all related objects, produced when a very large Sun-grazing comet fragmented several hundred years previously. The group is now known as theKreutz Sungrazers, and has produced some of the brightest comets ever seen, includingX/1106 C1 andComet Ikeya–Seki. The source of the group may have been theGreat Comet of 371 BC.[1][2]
Kreutz was born inSiegen in 1854, and obtained hisPhD at theUniversity of Bonn in 1880 on the orbit of cometC/1861 J1.[3] In 1882 he moved toKiel, working at the observatory and university there. In 1896 he became the editor of theAstronomische Nachrichten, the leading astronomicaljournal of the time, and held the position until his death in 1907.
Theminor planet3635 Kreutz, discovered byLuboš Kohoutek in 1981, was named after him.[4]
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