astronomy

Reinhart Langer

Reinhart Langer is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Reinhart Langer rather than just read about it. In short: Reinhart Hugo Michael Langer (17 January 1921 – 3 August 2018) was a New Zealand botanist. He was an academic at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) for over 25 years, and served as its acting principal from 1984 to 1985.

Key takeaways

Reinhart Langer belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Reinhart Langer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Reinhart Langer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Reinhart Hugo Michael Langer (17 January 1921 – 3 August 2018) was a New Zealand botanist. He was an academic at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) for over 25 years, and served as its acting principal from 1984 to 1985.

Early life, family, and education Born in Upper Silesia (at that time part of Germany, now in Poland) on 17 January 1921, Langer grew up in Berlin where he moved with his mother and two siblings after the death of his father, a judge, when Reinhart was aged three years. In 1939, Langer fled to England with his sister. He worked as a veterinary assistant in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, for a year, before spending the remainder of World War II working on a mixed cropping dairy farm. Langer won a scholarship to the University of Durham, and began studying agricultural science there in late 1945. After graduating Bachelor of Science with honours, he continued on to doctoral studies, completing his PhD in 1951. He was then appointed to a research position at the Grassland Research Institute (GRI), where he had spent time as a research assistant during his university studies. It was at GRI that Langer met his future wife, Hilary Joan Wilton, a biometrician, and they wed in September 1951. The couple went on to have three children.

Academic career In late 1958, Langer was appointed to the faculty of Lincoln College, near Christchurch, in New Zealand, where his research in the plant science department centred on increasing yields from crop and pasture plants. He was particularly interested in plants suited to Canterbury's dry summers, including white clover, subterranean clover, and lucerne. He also conducted research into wheat, and served as a member and chair of the national Wheat Research Committee. Langer was the foundation professor in plant science at Lincoln, and authored more than 60 books and scientific papers. With George Hill he wrote the book Agricultural Plants, published in 1982, that became a standard text for the teaching of plant science. He was also active in the administration of Lincoln College, serving as vice-principal, and as acting principal for 15 months in 1984 and 1985 between the tenures of Sir James Stewart and Bruce Ross. Langer served on the University Grants Committee, and was appointed Lincoln's public orator in 1978. When he retired from Lincoln in March 1985, Langer was conferred the title of professor emeritus.

Later life and death Following his retirement, Langer acted as a consultant for the establishment of forestry and agricultural polytechnic institutes in Indonesia. He died in Christchurch on 3 August 2018.

Honours and awards In 1972, Langer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and in 1978, he received the Leonard Cockayne Lecture Award from the Royal Society of New Zealand. Following his retirement from Lincoln, Langer was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1985 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to agricultural education. In 1990, he was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. In 2005, Langer was conferred an honorary DSc by Lincoln University. He was also a fellow of both the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science, and the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Reinhart Langer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Reinhart Langer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Reinhart Langer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Reinhart Langer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Reinhart Langer

In research: Reinhart Langer appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Reinhart Langer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Reinhart Langer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1921 births, 2018 deaths, 20th-century New Zealand botanists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Reinhart Langer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Reinhart Langer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Reinhart Langer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Reinhart Langer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Reinhart Langer in simple terms?

Why does Reinhart Langer matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Reinhart Langer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Reinhart Langer.