Heinrich Christian Schumacher
Heinrich Christian Schumacher ( born September 3, 1780 Bramstedt Holstein, † December 28, 1850 in Altona / Elbe ) was a German astronomer and surveyor. He founded the observatory of Altona and the first himmelskundliche journal Astronomische Nachrichten.
Childhood and youth
The son of the bailiff Andreas Schumacher was the age of seven by his father, the Danish King Frederick VI. - Also the Duke of Holstein was in personal union - presented. From this acquaintance Schumacher has repeatedly benefited in the course of his later life. After the death of his father his mother moved with him in 1790 to Altona, where he went to school at the Holstein villages topographer Johann Friedrich August. Through him, Jacob Struve, mathematician and director of the Altona Gymnasium Christianeum, the visited Schumacher from 1794 to 1799, he was first introduced to surveying and astronomy in contact.
After studying law at the universities of Kiel and Göttingen, he lectured the rights in 1805 at the University of Dorpat ( now Tartu in Estonia). The mathematician and head of the observatory Prof. Johann Wilhelm Andreas Pfaff led him closer to mathematics and astronomy; both subjects he studied after his return with a royal scholarship at the University of Copenhagen and Göttingen.
From the Jurisprudence of Astronomy
In Göttingen, Carl Friedrich Gauss was his teacher, the enthusiastic Schumacher for geodesy. After the one-year scholarship they visited together renowned astronomer and mathematician: ( Olbers, Schroeter, Bessel ). In his frequent intermediate stops in the domestic Altona Schumacher had also befriended Johann Georg Repsold whose observatory in Hamburg, he regularly used since 1808.
In 1810, Schumacher associate professor of astronomy at Copenhagen, in 1813 Director of the Mannheim Observatory and in 1815 full professor of astronomy in Copenhagen. From there, however, he returned immediately to Altona back to on behalf of Frederick VI. make the geodetic surveying of the meridian of Skagen to Lauenburg / Elbe in 1817, which was continued through Gauss by the Kingdom of Hanover and therefore connected to the European network.
In 1820 he was awarded by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences in Copenhagen commissioned to measure Holstein and present the results charted.
Altona Observatory and Astronomical
1821 Schumacher bought a house at the Altona Palmaille, where he set up his own institute, the observatory Altona. A royal privilege included except an annual budget for its employees, the assurance may live and do research until his death in Altona. From small bays located on the high bank of the Elbe building you could see multiple remote triangle points; in the garden of a meridian circle by Reichenbach was erected, the Repsold assembled and fitting out with its own improved Ableseniveau. The latitude of the meridian circle was at 53 ° 32 ' 45 east longitude from Paris with his 30' 25'' " in time " is determined ( cf. Altona meridian).
In 1823 Schumacher started on a proposal by the Danish Minister of State John of Mösting with the publication of the Astronomical Society, which greatly promoted the communication between professionals and scholars. Contributions of Gauss, Bessel, Rümker, Olbers, Encke, Airy, C. and W.Herschel left the still existing magazine quickly become the mouthpiece of astronomy.
Schumacher and his staff, including his longtime Observer and successor Adolph Cornelius Petersen, among other things, certain In 1824 the difference in length between Altona and Greenwich by a " Chronometer Expedition" in 1830 led to the island of Funen (Danish: Fyn ) Length provisions using the observation of pendulum oscillations by, measured the route for the 1844 opened railway line between Altona and Kiel, and took the city of Hamburg after the local " Great Fire " (1842 ) on trigonometry.
Heinrich Christian Schumacher addressed already in the 1840s with the problem of the differences of astronomical time between different locations and certain of the schedules of Altona- Kiel railway an artificial medium time - a good 40 years before the International Meridian Conference and a half-century introduction before the Central European Time.
Schumacher's last years
This zeal, but increasingly also problems with Christian VIII, the successor of his patron in 1839, who died on the Danish throne, led to a deterioration of his health.
During the Schleswig-Holstein uprising (1848-1850) storage before Altona home of royalist officials enemy soldiers; he was under house arrest, only allowed to privately participate in the Astronomische Nachrichten.
In this environment, died Schumacher, with countless medals ( including him in 1829, awarded Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society) Award, Member of almost all major scientific academies of Moscow, Paris and Philadelphia, on 28 December 1850.
His Altona observatory was in operation until 1872, the building fell into ruins until 1941; there is the Astronomical today. In the Altona Old Town since 1868 reminds the Schumacherstrasse at him. His grave is located at the former Holy Ghost Cemetery at the output of the S -Bahn station Behnstraße King Street and the local monument to the Altona meridian.
The lunar crater Schumacher was named after him in 1935.
Writings
- Astronomical treatises. 3 volumes. Altona 1823-1825.
- Astronomical Society. Publication, Altona 1822-1850. Continued after his death, is still published today
- Astronomical Yearbooks. Tübingen from 1836 to 1844.
- Astronomical auxiliary panels. 10 volumes. Copenhagen 1820-1829.