12.5 Retirement and Mount Wilson
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Fig. 12.8 Photograph taken from Hertzsprung–Kapteyn’s biography [1], en titled ‘The
professor and his secretary’
his successor. He was no longer actively involved in teaching and research and
left Groningen immediately after his retirement. I let Henriette Hertzsprung–
Kapteyn speak again [1]:
In June he gave his last lecture, and the Kapteyns said goodbye to Groningen.
The good friends were invited in turns to their table in De Doelen. They found
this a more intimate way of saying goodbye than during a joint big dinner, which
offers more ‘éclat’ [lustre] than confidentiality. And when they said goodbye to
the hotel, it was with melancholy for everything they were about to leave. The
headmistress said goodbye in tears, saying that they had been the most pleasant
and easy guests she had ever had. The appreciation was mutual, it had been good
years. They left at seven o’clock in the morning. None of their friends knew
about this departure, so no one escorted them out. That is how they wanted it,
and in silence they said goodbye to the city, where they had lived and worked
for 43 years. A long happy life of fruitful labor, of domestic happiness and of