Johann Gottfried Galle
Johann Gottfried Galle ( born June 9, 1812 in Radis, † July 10, 1910 in Potsdam ) was a German astronomer and university lecturer. He was involved in the discovery of the planet Neptune.
Life
Bile came in Pabst house near the village Radis ( Pabst is a thereat forest ) near Graefenhainichen the first son of the same name Johann Gottfried Galle Teerofenpächters ( 1790-1853 ) and his wife Maria Henriette born Pannier ( 1790-1839 ) to the world. He attended high school in Wittenberg and studied from 1830 to 1833 at the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin. He then took over at the High School of Guben a place in the higher teaching as a senior teacher of mathematics and physics. Later he moved to the Friedrichswerdersche Gymnasium in Berlin.
1835 appointed him to his former teacher, Professor Johann Franz Encke astronomy, as assistants to the outskirts newly built Berlin Observatory. There bile worked the next 16 years, where he especially a Fraunhofer refractor with 9 inch ( 22.5 cm) unused opening. In 1838 he discovered an inner dark ring of Saturn. From 1839 to 1840, he discovered three new comets. 1845 doctorate bile Dr. phil .. In the thesis he had dealt with the records of the Dane Ole Rømer to star positions.
On the morning of September 23, 1846, he received a letter from the French Urbain Le Verrier, who had examined the perturbations of Uranus. Le Verrier deduced from the position of a yet undiscovered planet and asked bile, scan the appropriate part of the sky. That same night, Galle discovered with the assistance of his assistant Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, only 1 ° away from the calculated position, an 8th mag star, who was not listed in the Berlin Academic star map. In the following night, a proper motion of the celestial body of 4 arcsec could be measured, so that the planets property was flawless. Galle declined, however, from always to be regarded as the discoverer of Neptune later called planet; he said to the discovery of Le Verrier.
1847 Galle was chosen as successor to Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel as director of the observatory Königsberg. Before the already possessed by Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointment was effective bile entered the beginning of 1848 back to one of Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi proceedings against him intrigue of the application.
1851 Galle went to Breslau, where he was first head of the local observatory and in 1856 was appointed professor of astronomy at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau. There he was over 45 years working. For the academic year 1875/76 he was appointed rector gewählt.In this time he sat down with the precise orbit determination of planets apart and developed methods for determining the height of the aurora and the track of meteors and summarized the data of all observed comets to 1894 in a work together. In addition, he was concerned with the magnetism of the earth and the climatology. In total, he has published over 200 works.
1897 moved to Potsdam Galle, where he died at the age of 98 years. He left behind his wife and two sons, Andrew and George Galle ( 1860-1946 ).
Bile was Buried in the Protestant Mary Magdalene Cemetery on Stone Street (Polish: ul Kamienna ) in Wroclaw, which was eliminated in 1967.
Honors
For the discovery of Neptune, he received from the King of Prussia the Red Eagle and the King of France appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour. He was a member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Astronomical Society. The Naturalist Society to Emden took Galle in 1859 as a corresponding honorary member of their society. The city Graefenhainichen erected a monument to him in 1977.
Named after him are Galle ( crater), Galle ( Martian crater ), a planetary ring of Neptune and the asteroid ( 2097 ) Galle.