Wolfgang Ludwig Krafft

Wolfgang Ludwig Krafft (Russian Логин Юрьевич Крафт / Login Jurjewitsch force; * 25 Augustjul / September 5 1743greg in Saint Petersburg, .. .. † 20 Novemberjul / December 2 1814greg ) was an astronomer. He is named for the moon crater Krafft.

He was the son of the physicist and mathematician Georg Wolfgang Krafft (1701-1754), with whom he moved into the home of Tübingen at the age of one year. He visited the monastery schools Denkendorf and Maulbronn studied on a scholarship in Tübingen and acquired in 1764 the philosophical master's degree.

In 1767 he went as professor of astronomy at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

In 1769 he was sent to Orenburg in the Urals, to observe the transit of Venus.

In 1772, he supported the blind in the previous year Leonhard Euler, in conjunction with his son, Johann Albrecht Euler, Anders Johan Lexell and Nicholas walk in the revision of the Theoria motus lunae that had once won the prize of the British Parliament. Same subject treated of the Essai sur les Lunaires d' Euler in the Nova Acta Petropolitana of 1788.

A large number of essays published Krafft in the various published by the Russian Academy of collective works, refers more to physical and astronomical questions; he treated it, for example, the geomagnetic elements, the theory of electrophorus, the Canton'schen luminous stone, the attraction of spheroids, the achromatic lens glasses and the Pendulum. The pure mathematics is apparently too little appreciated Essai sur les nombres premiers ( Nova Acta, 1802) devoted.

In 1804 he was appointed to the State Council.

According to him, the moon crater Krafft is named.

Publications

• Essai sur la méthode de trouver la latitude sur mer par les hauteurs simultanees de deux astres; 1799 ( Online)
• Méthode de Krafft, reduire pour la distance de deux apparent astres à la vraie distance; 1812