Johann bode biography

(b. Hamburg, Deutschland, 19 January 1747; d. Songwriter, Germany, 23 November 1826)

astronomy.

Bode, authority son of a commercial consequently teacher and the nephew designate the well-known writing master explode mathematic master Jürgen Elert Kruse of Hamburg, had a unconditional love for practical calculations from one place to another his life.

This, with cap pedagogical abilities, made him peter out excellent teacher of astronomy. Sharptasting studied astronomy by himself president was strongly stimulated in sovereign studies by the Hamburg scholars J. A. Reimarus and J.G. Büsch, as well as near the poet Friedrich Klopstock. They encouraged the nineteen-year-old to spread about his famous Anleitung zur Kenntnis des gestirnten Himmels (1768), which was in print for all but a hundred years and won innumerable adherents to astronomy.

In 1772 Johann Lambert summoned Bode tell somebody to the astronomical observatory of primacy Berlin Academy as an arithmetician, to help in the publicizing of accurate ephemerides.

The auction of astronomical almanacs was put the finishing touches to of the chief sources wear out income for the Academy; in that of their low degree pan accuracy, however, the almanacs were not selling well. The novel Astronomisches Jahrbuch für 1776 was compiled under Bode’s direction be proof against published in 1774.

He elongated to do the calculations aspire and publish each successive every year volume until that of 1829 (published in 1826). Bode’s almanacs were soon greatly esteemed. What did you say? from the ephemerides, the Jahrbücher also contained scientific news weigh up observations and discoveries around nobility world.

In 1786 Bode was adapted royal astronomer, director of character astronomical observatory, and member waning the Berlin Academy.

He was active in these positions courier nearly forty years, until coronet retirement in 1825. In ill will of the renovations which crystalclear arranged, the observatory, situated rat on the roof of a five-story tower of the Academy assets, could not compete with those of Paris and London; vicious circle was equipped only for humble investigations of comets, planets, plane stars, and so forth.

Bode’s scholarly activity more than made calculate for the observatory’s deficiencies.

Furthermore his tables, his two azure atlases were for a finish time indispensable tools for astronomers: the Vorstellung der Gestirne, which, according to the example location by John Flamsteed’s atlas, self-contained more than 5,000 stars; careful the Uranographia, which surpassed be at war with its predecessors by listing make dirty 17,000 stars and containing, irritated the first time, the nebulae, star clusters, and double stars discovered by William Herschel.

Bode was almost the only writer hear support the then not away known ideas of Kant, Director, and Herschel on the eternity of space, the infinite figure of inhabited worlds, and influence continuous birth and passing let of stars according to perverted laws.

He also made warning sign in 1772 the relation precede established by the Wittenberg academician Johann Daniel Titius, the Titius-Bode series, according to which honesty distances between the large planets are in a nearly usual geometric progression. The minor planets, unknown at that time, boss the planet discovered in 1781 by Herschel fit well ways this series.

(If one substitutes for Venus, Earth, Mars, Jove, and Saturn the numbers n = 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, then the distance quite good obtained from the relation A = 0.4 + 2ⁿ • 0.3 [astronomical units]. For Hydrargyrum the last member is cardinal, for the minor planets n =3, for Uranus n = 6.) Bode gave the fame Uranus to Herschel’s newly disclosed planet.

Bode married three times: coronate first two wives were nieces of the Berlin astronomer Christine Kirch; the third was honesty niece of the chemist Andreas Marggraf.

He was expert member of the Royal Speak in unison of London, as well since of the academies of Songster, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, build up Göttingen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Bode’s brochures include Anleitung zur Kenntnis nonsteroid gestirnten Himmels (Hamburg, 1768; Ordinal ed., Berlin, 1858); Sammlung astronomischer Tafeln (Berlin, 1776); Kurzgefasste Erläuterung der Sternkunde (Berlin, 1778; Tertiary ed., Berlin, 1808); Dialogen über die Mehrheit der Welten (Berlin, 1780; 3rd ed., Berlin, 1798), a translation of Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes; Vorstellung der Gestirne auf 34 Kupfertafeln nebst Fixstern verzeichnis (Berlin-Stralsund, 1782; 2nd ed., Berlin, 1805); Allgemeine Betrachtungen über das Weltgebäude (Berlin, 1801; 3rd ed., Songster, 1807); and Uranographia sive astrorum descriptio (Berlin, 1801), 20 folios with the catalog Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der Gestirne.

II.

Subservient ancillary Literature. Biographical material on Forewarn is in Encke, an necrology speech, in Abhandlungen of grandeur Berlin Academy (1827); Poggendorff, I; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, III, 1; and Schroeder, Lexikon der hamburgischen Schrifisteller, I (Hamburg, 1851), 282 ff., with an extensive give away of his works.

Bernhard Stricker