Resolute and Undertaking Characters: The Lives of Wilhelm and Otto Struve

Front Cover
Springer Science & Business Media, 2012 M12 6 - 259 pages
My interest in the history of the Struve family is long-standing but lay dormant until 1972, when I found myself organizing a symposium of the International Astronomical Union in memory of the second Otto Struve. To satisfy my own curiosity, I investigated the precise relationships of the famous astronomers in the family and published an account of them, based mainly on secondary sources. The exercise made me a ware that there was no biography in English of the first and probably still the greatest astronomer in the clan - Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve. Wilhelm's son, the first Otto, wrote an account (in German) of his father's life, intended primarily for family and close friends and --though printed-- not generally available. Through the kindness of a family member I have a copy from which I have been able to work. The Soviet historian of science, Z. K. Sokolovskaya, wrote a biography in Russian, in 1964, to mark the centenary of Wilhelm's death. This had a limited edition, and my efforts to obtain a copy failed. Neither work has, in its entirety, been translated into English, although Michael Meo of Oakland, California, and Kevin Krisciunas of Hilo, Hawaii, have kindly made available to me their unpublished translations of some sections of the latter. In the of a complete copy, however, when I decided to attempt an English absence language biography, I thought it best to do so independently of Sokolovskaya's.
 

Contents

Family Origins and Wilhelms Childhood
1
Student Days at Dorpat University
13
Astronomy at the Beginning of
23
Nineteenth Century 2248
30
The Great Refractor
45
The Founding of Pulkovo
66
The Astronomical Capital of the World
89
Measuring the Sky
113
Wilhelms Illness and Last Years
156
The Transition
168
The Companion of Procyon and the Transits of Venus
181
The 30Inch Refractor
196
Mapping the Sky
209
Ottos Retirement and Last Years
219
The Family Tradition
235
Name Index
245

The Early Pulkovo Years
131
Etudes dastronomie stellaire
145

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information