Maurice Loewy
Maurice Loewy ( born April 15, 1833 in Vienna, † October 15th 1907 in Paris) was an Austrian- French astronomer and observatory director. In addition to celestial mechanics and astrometry, he dealt among other things, with the Selenografie and published the photographic Parisian Moon Atlas.
Life
He was born Moritz Loewy. His Jewish parents had moved in 1841 to Vienna to escape the anti-Semitism in their home town. Loewy was an assistant at the Vienna University Observatory and here was devoted to celestial mechanics. As a prerequisite for a professorship, however, demanded the Austrian Minister of Culture of tuna baptism. The then director of the Observatory, Karl Ludwig von Littrow, mediated Loewy 1860 a post in the Paris Observatory. In France, Loewy then took French citizenship.
He dealt with the orbits of asteroids and planets and the measurement of geographical lengths and thus improved the accuracy of the Connaissance des temps, the official astronomical yearbook in France. Furthermore, working on subjects of optics, aberration of light and constructed a long-focus Coude equatorial reflecting telescope with which his assistant Pierre Puiseux made over 6000 moon shots.
Loewy in 1872 was appointed to the Bureau des Longitudes, the French Institute for astronomical time and length determination. In 1873 he was a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.
Loewy in 1896 became director of the Paris Observatory, he reorganized the institution and established the Department of Physical Astronomy. More than ten years, he worked with Pierre Puiseux (1855-1928) on an Atlas of the Moon - composed of 10,000 photographs, many of which were taken on Loewy Equatorial. Your Atlas photographique de la Lune (1910 ) served for more than half a century as the basis for the lunar mapping. In addition, Loewy committed in international Carte du Ciel project, but one never quite finished photographic sky map and survey.
Maurice Loewy died in Paris in 1907 to circulatory arrest.
Honors
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1889
- The lunar crater Loewy was named in 1935 by Loewy. It is believed that the asteroid (253 ) Mathilde was named after his wife.
Writings (selection )
- Orbit of Comet V 1858 K. K. Court and State Printing House, Vienna 1858
- Orbit determination of the first comet in 1857, K. K. Court and State Printing House, Vienna 1859
- Loewy & Puiseux: Paris Moon Atlas in 48 photographic images, Paris 1896
- Loewy & Puiseux: Atlas de la Lune photographique (12-Piece, 1910 ) on Google Books.