|Photo courtesy Armagh Observatory| |23 October 1893||1976 Bruce
Medalist||10 September 1985| Born in Estonia, Öpik studied and
began research at Moscow University. During World War I he
helped establish Turkestan University in Tashkent. In 1921 he
returned to Estonia to complete his doctorate and direct
astronomy at the University of Tartu. He remained there, aside
from four years at Harvard College Observatory, until forced to
flee the Red Army by horse cart during World War II. His last
four decades of active research were at Armagh Observatory,
Northern Ireland, where he edited the Irish Astronomical Journal
from 1950 to 1981. During part of this period he also held an
appointment at the University of Maryland. Öpik established the
foundation of the physical theory of meteors, developed new
statistical methods and performed statistical studies of
meteors, comets, and asteroids, and predicted the martian
craters and the nature of the surface of Venus. He also made
early contributions to stellar structure a