Karel van der Hucht
Karel van der Hucht (born 16 January 1946) is a Dutch astronomer from the Netherlands. He studied at Utrecht University from 1964 to 1972 and earned his PhD in 1978. He did a postdoc at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, from 1978 to 1979. Since 1972 he worked at the Utrecht Laboratory for Space Research, which later became SRON, as a senior scientist. In 1981 he produced the first modern catalog of galactic Wolf–Rayet stars.
His research spans ultraviolet, infrared, submillimeter, radio, and X-ray wavelengths, focusing on hot, massive stars. He has more than 330 scientific publications and has organized many international conferences, including four IAU Symposia. From 2003 to 2006 he served as Assistant General Secretary of the IAU, and in 2006 he was appointed General Secretary, the fourth Dutch person to hold that role. He retired from the IAU in 2011.
In 2013 he was made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.
Together with relatives, Van der Hucht founded the Van der Hucht et al. Indisch Tea and Family Archive Foundation in 1983. The archive documents Dutch East Indies families and tea companies and now fills about fourteen metres of shelves, known as the Heren van de Thee. He has also built an image archive with around 1,200 photos and dozens of films, covering 1800–1950, and contributed to publications by authors such as Rob Nieuwenhuys and Hella S. Haasse. In 2003 he received a Zilveren Anjer award from Prince Bernhard.
In 2006 the foundation began transferring its archive to the Nationaal Archief. The asteroid 10966 (3308 T-1) was named after Van der Hucht; it was discovered in 1971 by Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld and recorded by Tom Gehrels.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:46 (CET).