Rodolphe Radau

Jean Charles Rodolphe Radau ( born January 22, 1835 in Angerburg, East Prussia, † December 21, 1911 in Paris) was a German - French astronomer.

Life and work

Radaus father was the director of an institution for the deaf and mentally disabled. Wheel went to Königsberg to school and studied from 1852 to 1857 at the University of Königsberg mathematics and astronomy (including with Christian August Friedrich Peters and Carl Gottfried Neumann ), where he was 1855/56 voluntary staff at the observatory in Königsberg. He went after he had edited the astronomical and geodetic observations of the French explorer Antoine d' Abbadie d' Arrast (1810-1897), among others, in Ethiopia and so made ​​contact, with this in 1858 to Paris, where he remained for the rest of his career.

From 1866 he was a science writer in the Revue des deux Mondes, where he was editor of it soon. He has also written numerous articles previously as a science journalist in various magazines, including the Journal of Débats. He was known for his brilliant style and had wide-span interests, for example, he also wrote a libretto for Jacques Offenbach. After a short interruption by the German - French War ( he was only in 1873 a French citizen ) he was back in Paris, was with Gaston Darboux the Bulletin des Sciences Mathematiques out and was co-founder of the Bulletin Astronomique in which he also published a lot. In addition to his editors and journalists work, he continued his scientific work continued and won the 1892 Prix Damoiseau the French Academy of Sciences for a study on the fault of the lunar orbit by the planet. Due to this work, he succeeded by Félix Tisserand (with whom he also collaborated several times ) was added to the French Academy of Sciences in 1897.

He was a member of the Bureau des Longitudes in 1899 and devoted himself to the calculation of lunar ephemeris according to the theory of Charles Eugène Delaunay. The creation of the panels, which had already been begun by Delaunay and Tisserand, but encountered difficulties ( the interference by the planets had to be completely redesigned from the wheel ) and was completed by him until much later ( Tables de la lune sur fondées la théorie de Delaunay, Bureau des Longitudes, Gauthier -Villars 1911). Another time much acclaimed work was the astronomical theory of refraction in the atmosphere dedicated ( Annales de l' Observatoire de Paris, in 1881 and 1889), for which he also calculated tables, and a work on the figure of the earth, where he differential equation solved by Clairaut with a transformation named after him ( as Radau approximation known).

He published in 1864 an essay in which he used one of the first elliptic functions on the three-body problem. By analyzing the observations of the English astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington, he determined also in 1864 the period of rotation of the sun in different widths. Wheel has published several popular science books, for example, meteorology and acoustics (where he made ​​known the theories of Hermann von Helmholtz in France).

In 1871 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg. A crater on Mars named after him.

Writings

  • Les Planètes au delà de Mercure, Paris, Au Bureau de Cosmos, 1861 ( Online)
  • Recherches sur la modern conductibilité calorifique, 1862
  • Le Spectre solaire, 1863
  • Sur la formule barométrique, 1864
  • Sur la base scientifique de la musique: analysis of recherches de M. Helmholtz, 1865
  • Sur les erreurs personnelles, 1865
  • Théorie des battements et des sons Resultants d'après M. Helmholtz, 1865
  • L' Acoustique, ou Les phénomènes du son, Hachette 1867
  • L' Origine de l' homme d'après Darwin, 1871
  • Les observatoires de montagne. Les nouveaux observatoires météorologiques du Puy -de- Dôme et du -Midi de Bigorre Picdu, Gauthier -Villars 1876
  • La Production Houillère et l' exportation du charbon en Angleterre et en France, 1876
  • Récents Progres de l' astronomy stellaire, 1876
  • La Lumière et les climats, 1877
  • Actinométrie, 1877
  • Les Radiations chimiques du soleil, 1877
  • La Photographie et ses applications scientifiques, 1877
  • La Constitution de la terre intérieure, 1880
  • Le Rôle des vents dans les climats chauds, Gauthier -Villars 1880
  • Le Magnétisme, Librairie Hachette 1881
  • Travaux concernant le problème des trois corps et la théorie of perturbations, 1881
  • La nouvelle Météorologie et la prévision du temps, 1883
  • Les Vêtements et les dans leurs rapports avec l' habitations atmosphère, 1883
Węgorzewo Carl Neumann Astrophysics Data System Integrated Authority File
690075
de