German astronomer
Johann Heinrich von Madler
|
---|
Johann Heinrich von Madler
|
Born
| (
1794-05-29
)
29 May 1794
Berlin
|
---|
Died
| 14 March 1874
(1874-03-14)
(aged 79)
|
---|
Nationality
| German
|
---|
Scientific career
|
Fields
| astronomy
|
---|
|
Johann Heinrich von Madler
(29 May 1794,
Berlin
? 14 March 1874,
Hannover
) was a German
astronomer
.
Life and work
[
edit
]
His father was a master tailor and when 12 he studied at the Friedrich?Werdersche Gymnasium in Berlin.
[1]
He was orphaned at age 19 by an outbreak of
typhus
, and found himself responsible for raising three younger sisters. He began giving academic lessons as a private tutor and in this way met
Wilhelm Beer
, a wealthy banker, in 1824.
In 1829 Beer decided to set up a private observatory in Berlin, with a 95 mm
refractor telescope
made by
Joseph von Fraunhofer
, and Madler worked there. In 1830 they began producing drawings of
Mars
which later became the first true maps of that planet. They were the first to choose what is today known as
Sinus Meridiani
as the
prime meridian
for Martian maps.
They made a preliminary determination for Mars's
rotation period
, which was off by almost 13 seconds. A later determination in 1837 was off by only 1.1 seconds.
They also produced the first exact map of the
Moon
,
Mappa Selenographica
, published in four volumes in 1834?1836. In 1837 a description of the Moon (
Der Mond
) was published. Both were the best descriptions of the Moon for many decades, not superseded until the map of
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt
in the 1870s. Beer and Madler drew the firm conclusion that the features on the Moon do not change, and there is no atmosphere or water.
In 1836,
Johann Franz Encke
appointed Madler an observer at the
Berlin Observatory
, and he observed with its 240-mm refractor. In 1840, Madler was appointed director of the
Dorpat (Tartu) Observatory
in
Estonia
(then
Russian Empire
), succeeding
Friedrich Wilhelm Struve
who had moved to
Pulkovo Observatory
. He carried out
meteorological
as well as astronomical observations. He continued Struve's observations of
double stars
. He remained in Tartu until he retired in 1865, and then returned to Germany.
By examining the
proper motions
of stars, he came up with his "Central Sun Hypothesis", according to which the center of the galaxy was located in the
Pleiades
star cluster
and that the
Sun
revolves around it. He got the location wrong.
He published many scientific works, among them a two-volume
History of Descriptive Astronomy
in 1873. Madlers
Populare Astronomie ? Wunderbau des Weltalls
("Popular Astronomy ? the Miraculous Architecture of the Universe") reached out to wider audiences; an eighth edition was published in 1885.
[2]
In 1864, he proposed a calendar reform for Russia: After dropping 12 days to align with
Gregorian calendar
dates before the year 1900, the leap year in 1900 along with every 128th year afterwards (2028, 2156, etc.) under the Julian rules would be cancelled.
This would give a mean year of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds, which is extremely close to the mean tropical year.
[3]
[4]
Neither the Tsar nor Orthodox clergy accepted this unsolicited proposal, though a modified version of it was made by
Sergey Glazenap
in 1900, and ultimately Russia would adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1918.
The craters
Madler
on the Moon and
Madler
on Mars are both named in his honor.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Joeveer, Mihkel (2007). "Madler, Johann Heinrich von".
The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers
. New York: Springer. p. 723.
doi
:
10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_883
.
ISBN
978-0-387-31022-0
.
- ^
Andreas W. Daum
,
Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Burgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Offentlichkeit, 1848?1914
. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998, pp. 268, 453, 458, 500, including a short biography.
- ^
von Madler, Johann (1864).
"O Reforme Kalendarya"
О Реформ? Календаря
.
Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya
(in Russian).
121
(VI): 9?20
. Retrieved
2017-06-27
.
- ^
von Madler, Johann (1865). "Die Kalender-Reform" [The Calendar Reform].
Deutsche Naturforscher
(in German).
40
: 88ff.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Heino Eelsalu,
Dieter B. Herrmann
:
Johann Heinrich Madler (1794?1874): Eine dokumentarische Biographie.
Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1985 ISSN 0138-4600 (German)
External links
[
edit
]
- Frank J. Tipler
,
"Olbers's Paradox, the Beginning of Creation, and Johann Madler,"
Journal for the History of Astronomy
, Vol. 19, Pt. 1 (February 1988), pp. 45?48.
- F. J. Tipler,
"Johann Madler's Resolution of Olbers' Paradox,"
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
, Vol. 29, No. 3 (September 1988), pp. 313?325.
- Frank J. Tipler,
"More on Olbers's Paradox,"
a review of Edward Harrison,
Darkness at Night: A Riddle of the Universe
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987),
Journal for the History of Astronomy
, Vol. 19, Pt. 4 (November 1988), pp. 284?286. (Note that the last page is missing in the PDF version of the article at the foregoing link, but is contained in the GIF version.)
- http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/mars/chap04.htm
Archived
2017-07-01 at the
Wayback Machine
- http://www.obs.ee/obs/maedler/maedler.html
- "Madler, Johann Heinrich"
.
The American Cyclopædia
. 1879.
- "Madler, Johann Heinrich"
.
New International Encyclopedia
. 1905.
Obituary
[
edit
]
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Academics
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|