Luboš Kohoutek

Luboš Kohoutek (1935-2023) was a Czech astronomer who discovered comets, minor planets and a large number of planetary nebulae. Born on 29 January 1935, he studied physics and astronomy in Brno and Prague, finishing in 1958, then worked at the Astronomical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he published the well-cited Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae in 1967. After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he decided to stay in West Germany in 1970 and held a long-term position at the Bergedorf Observatory in Hamburg, later working at observatories in Spain and Chile. He is best known for Comet Kohoutek, C/1973 E1, which was visible to the naked eye in 1973 and became famously disappointing, and for the periodic comets 75D/Kohoutek and 76P/West-Kohoutek-Ikemura. He also discovered supernova SN 1973F and 76 minor planets, including the Apollo asteroid 1865 Cerberus, and asteroid 1850 Kohoutek is named after him. He officially retired in 2001, kept researching in Hamburg, published 162 scientific works and died on 30 December 2023.