Wilhelm Anderson

Wilhelm Robert Karl Anderson ( born October 28, 1880 in Minsk, Belarus, † March 26, 1940 in Meseritz ) was a Baltic German astrophysicist who dealt primarily with the physical structure of the stars.

Life

William Anderson was born in Minsk in a German -born family ( his brothers were the statisticians Oskar Anderson and folklorist Walter Anderson), and spent his youth in Kazan where his father Nikolai Anderson was Professor of Finno -Ugric languages. Between 1910 and 1920 he worked as a physics teacher in Samara and Minsk. In 1920 he moved to with his brother Walter Anderson to Tartu (Estonia). At the University of Tartu in 1923, he obtained his master's degree in 1927 and doctoral degrees. In 1934, he applied for admission to the Habilitation " Is there an upper limit to the density of matter and energy? " and was discontinued after successful completion of the process in 1936 as a lecturer in Tartu.

Between 1937 and 1939, Anderson became ill on a nervous disease which led to the inability to work. In October 1939, he was, like many German Balts, relocated to Germany, where he died in March 1940 in the medical and nursing home Obrawalde at Meseritz. The suspicion was expressed that Anderson was a victim of the Nazi "euthanasia" program.

One of the most important works Andersons dealt with the calculation of the upper mass limit of white dwarfs (1929, Tartu ), which became known as the Chandrasekhar limit later.

Works (selection)

• About the possibility of existence of cosmic dust in the solar corona. In: Journal of physics. No. 28, Berlin, 1924.
• About the marginal density of matter and energy. In: Journal of physics. No. 56, pp. 851-856, Berlin, 1929.