Maarten Schmidt (b. 1929) is a famous Dutch-American astronomer. His identification of the wavelengths of the radiation emitted by quasars led to the theory that they may be among the most distant and the oldest objects ever observed. The name was suggested by W. A. Fröger and H. Habing.
Discovered on 24-9-1960 in Palomar by van Houten, C. J., van Houten-Groeneveld, I., Gehrels, T.