Edmund Weiss

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Edmund Weiss

Edmund Weiss (born August 26, 1837 in Freiwaldau , Austrian Silesia , † June 21, 1917 in Vienna ) was an Austrian astronomer .

Life

Weiss was the son of the doctor Josef Weiss and his wife Josefa, geb. Vielhauer, and twin brother of Adolf Gustav Weiss , who would later work as a professor of botany in Prague .

He spent his early years in England near Richmond, where his father had set up a hydrotherapy facility. Shortly before the death of the father, the family returned to Austria. From 1847 to 1855 he attended high school in Opava . He then studied mathematics, astronomy and physics at the University of Vienna and was awarded a doctorate in 1860. phil is doing his doctorate. From 1858 he was an assistant at the Vienna University Observatory , whose director was Karl Ludwig von Littrow . In 1869 he became honorary professor and in 1875 full professor at the University of Vienna.

In connection with the construction of a new observatory for the university outside of Vienna, Weiss traveled to the USA in 1872 with the aim of finding out about observatories and instruments there.

When Littrow died in 1878 before the new observatory was completed, Weiss became his successor. Under his direction the two main instruments were procured and installed, in 1882 the 27-inch refractor from Grubb , at that time the largest refractor in the world, and the 11¾ refractor from Alvan Graham Clark .

Weiss undertook further trips to observe eclipses and other astronomical events:

In 1872 he married Adelinde Fenzl (born 1845), with whom he had seven children. Until his retirement in 1910, he remained director of the university observatory. He died on June 21, 1917 after a long illness at the age of 79.

Awards and honors

Fonts

In addition to numerous articles that appeared mainly in the Astronomical News , he also published popular writings. Among other things, he re- edited Joseph Johann von Littrow's Miracles of the Sky and a picture atlas of the world of stars. Astronomy for Everyone (1888). Since 1878 he was also the editor of 17 volumes of the New Annals of the observatory in Vienna-Währing .

Other writings :

  • Across the Ariadne 43 train . (1858).
  • About the orbit of comet VIII in 1858 . (1859).
  • About the state of astronomy at the beginning of historical time . (1864)
  • Calculation of the solar eclipses in the years 1868 to 1870 . (1867).
  • Contributions to the knowledge of the shooting stars . (1868-1870).
  • Discussion of the observations made during the total solar eclipse on August 10, 1868 and the results obtained from them . (1870).
  • Star maps of the northern and southern skies . (1874).
  • Observation of the passage of Venus on December 8, 1874 in Jassy and determination of the geographical longitude of the observation site . (1875).
  • Changes in individual editorial elements of an instrument by leaps and bounds . (1878).
  • About the orbit of comets 1843I and 1880a . (1881).
  • By calculating the differential quotient of the true anomaly and the radius vector according to the eccentricity in strongly eccentric orbits . (1881).
  • Developments to Lagrange's reversion theorem, and applications of the same to the solution of Keppler's equation . (1885).
  • About the determination of M in Olber's method of calculating a comet's orbit, with special consideration for the exceptional case . (1886).
  • About the surface texture of the planets in our solar system . (1891).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Constantin von Wurzbach : Weiss, Joseph (Hydropath) . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 54th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1886, pp. 122–124 ( digitized version ).
  2. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Edmund Weiss
  3. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter W. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 14, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Edmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES White, Edmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiwaldau , Austrian Silesia
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1917
Place of death Vienna