Albertus Antonie Nijland (October 30, 1868, Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

 – August 18, 1936, Utrecht) was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

.

He was professor of astronomy at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht

Utrecht University

Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....

, and served as director of the Sterrewacht Sonnenborgh (now the Sterrekundig Instituut) of the university.

In 1901 he participated in a Dutch solar eclipse

Solar eclipse

As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...

 expedition to Karang Sago, Sumatra

Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...

.

He was noted for his observations of variable star

Variable star

A star is classified as variable if its apparent magnitude as seen from Earth changes over time, whether the changes are due to variations in the star's actual luminosity, or to variations in the amount of the star's light that is blocked from reaching Earth...

s, and published a number of papers on the subject in Astronomische Nachrichten, and elsewhere, from 1917 until 1936. He proposed naming variable stars in each constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 using a simple numbering system beginning with V1, V2, ... and so forth. However the double-letter system starting with RR was already in
widespread use. As a result, variable stars after QZ were numbered according to Nijland's system beginning with V335.

The crater Nijland

Nijland (crater)

Nijland is a relatively small impact crater on the far side of the Moon. This is a relatively isolated crater that is surrounded by impacted surface with smaller craters. The nearest significant crater is Kurchatov to the northeast. More than 100 km the north of Nijland is a crater chain that runs...

 on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

is named after him.