August Ludwig Busch

August Ludwig Busch (born September 7, 1804 in Danzig , † September 30, 1855 in Königsberg (Prussia) ) was a German astronomer . From 1846 to 1855 he headed the Königsberg observatory .

life and work

August Ludwig Busch was born in Danzig on September 7, 1804 . After attending school, he graduated from the royal art school in his hometown, whose director Johann Adam Breysig aroused in him a tendency to geometric drawing. He later expanded his mathematical knowledge by taking private lessons from a high school teacher.

In 1824 he found a job as a private tutor for the children of Joseph von Eichendorff , who was a councilor for the President of West Prussia in Danzig. When Eichendorff was transferred to Königsberg in the same year , Busch also moved there. In addition to his teaching activities, he attended lectures at the local university , among others with Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel , from whom he trained in astronomy . Without obtaining a university degree, he was employed by Bessel in 1831 as the successor to Carl Theodor Anger as an assistant at the Königsberg observatory .

In addition to his observational activities, he subjected the long-term series of observations, which Bradley had created from 1727 to 1747 to determine the aberration and nutation constants with a zenith sector, to a new evaluation using current mathematical and astronomical methods. For this treatise he received a prize from the Royal Society of Sciences in Copenhagen.

After Bessel's death in 1846, he temporarily headed the Königsberg observatory and was finally given this position in 1849, while Peters received the university professorship for astronomy.

Busch continued the observations in the sense of Bessel and published several volumes of the Königsberg observations . He also wrote a textbook on descriptive geometry.

August Ludwig Busch died of cholera on September 30, 1855.

Fonts (selection)

• AL Busch: Reduction of the observations made by Bradley at Kew and Wansted, to determine the quantities of aberration and nutation. University Press, Oxford 1838 ( digitized version )
• AL Busch: Preschool of Descriptive Geometry. G. Reimer, Berlin 1846 (preface by CGJ Jacobi ) ( digitized version )
• Publications by AL Busch in the Astrophysics Data System

literature

• Karl Christian Bruhns :  Busch, August Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 635.
• NN: Augustus Ludovick Busch. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. XVI (1856), pp. 79–80 (obituary, English)