Born: 22-Mar-1799
Birthplace: Memel, East Prussia, Germany
Died: 17-Feb-1875
Location of death: Bonn, Germany
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Astronomer

Nationality: Germany
Executive summary: Durchmusterung

German astronomer, born at Memel on the 22nd of March 1799. He studied at the University of Königsberg, and was attracted to astronomy by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, whose assistant he became (October 1, 1820). His treatise on the path of the great comet of 1811 appeared in 1822; he was, in 1823, entrusted with the direction of the observatory at Abo; and he exchanged it for a similar charge at Helsingfors in 1832. His admirable investigation of the sun's motion in space was published in 1837; and in the same year he was appointed professor of astronomy in the University of Bonn, where he died on the 17th of February 1875. He also published Observationes Astronomicae Aboae Factae (3 vols., 1830-32); DLX Stellarum Fixarum Positiones Mediae (1835); and the first seven volumes of Astronomische Beobachtungen auf der Sternwarte zu Bonn (1846-69) , containing his observations of northern and southern star-zones, and his great Durchmusterung (vols. III-V, 1859-62) of 324,198 stars, from the north pole to -2 degrees Dec. The corresponding atlas was issued in 1863. His observations (begun in 1838) and discussions of variable stars were embodied in vol. VII of the same series.

    University: University of Königsberg

    Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal 1863
    Lunar Crater Argelander (16.5S, 5.8E, 34km dia, 3km height)

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