Bruno Meyermann

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Bruno Meyermann (born December 7, 1876 in Strasbourg , † April 12, 1963 in Göttingen ) was a German astronomer and long-time professor at the Göttingen observatory . He was the main processor of the Göttingen actinometry , the world's most extensive brightness catalog of 3,500 stars at the time. In addition to 30 years of academic teaching, other focal points were the sun, double stars and the structure of spiral nebulae .

Life

Meyermann was born on December 7, 1876, the son of an administrative officer in Strasbourg. From 1895 he studied astronomy in Göttingen - and in the summer semester of 1899 in Heidelberg - and completed his studies in 1902 with a doctorate on the variable star Delta Cephei under Karl Schwarzschild . During his studies he became a member of the "Student Choir of Georgia Augusta" (today StMV Blue Singers ). In 1906 he went as an assistant at the Naval Observatory in Wilhelmshaven and followed in 1909 by a reputation in the German military and trading post Tsingtau the (Qingdao) Naval Observatory building.

Meyermann was director of the observatory in Tsingtau until November 1914. It had been housed in its own four-story building since 1909 and was equipped with modern instruments, including apparatus for measuring geomagnetism and a seismograph . The regular scientific activity consisted of meteorological and tidal observations, weather forecasts for nautical purposes, seismographic and geomagnetic measurements, as well as astronomical and other geophysical observations. Bruno Meyermann had several Chinese employees, including two assistants and two calculators. The observatory also had an important function for shipping. It provided the navigators with weather reports, tide calculations, information about geomagnetic disturbances, etc. Meyermann was also a lecturer at the German-Chinese University in Tsingtau .

After Tsingtau was conquered in World War I , Meyermann was a prisoner of war in the Japanese Empire for five years : in the Kumamoto camp since November 1914, in the Kurume camp from June 1915 and in the Bando camp from August 1918 .

After his release in December 1919, he received an appointment at the Hamburg Hydrographic Institute , which he refused. He went to Göttingen University Observatory as an observer , completed his habilitation there in 1922 and held lectures, internships and field exercises - well after his retirement in 1942 . Meyermann's diverse astronomical work included the development of astronomical instruments, the calculation of planetoid and comet orbits, photometric photometry of stars (Göttingen actinometry ), the study of binary stars , the sun and the rotation of the earth .

Heinrich Voigt mentions Meyermann's personality in the obituary of the Astronomische Nachrichten (1963) a. a. especially his sincerity, the kind humor and a wealth of anecdotes from his 40 years in Göttingen, as well as his 40 most important publications. He was a member of the Göttingen Freemason Lodge Augusta for the golden circle .

In his honor, the asteroid discovered by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth in 1939 was named Meyermann in 1739 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 86.
  2. ↑ H.Voigt: Bruno Meyermann †

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meyermann, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1963
Place of death Goettingen