Ernst Lamp

Ernst August Lamp (born April 4, 1850 in Kopperpahl ; † May 10, 1901 in the Tschivitoke station on Lake Kiwu ) was a German astronomer.

Life

Ernst Lamp was a son of Peter Lamp (born November 6, 1813 in Wendtorf ; † November 12, 1890 in Kiel ) and his wife Magdalena Dorothea, née Mordhorst (born July 2, 1824 in Kopperpahl; † June 4, 1894 in Kiel) . The father was a Kopperpahler hereditary tenant whose father Claus Lamp worked as a farmer in Wendtorf. His mother's father, named Dietrich Detlef Mordhorst, was also a leaseholder in Kopperpahl. He had a brother named Johannes Christian (born October 22, 1857 in Kopperpahl, † 1891 in Davos ), who was an astronomer.

From 1861 to 1869 Lamp attended a high school in Kiel. He then studied mathematics and astronomy at Kiel University. In 1870/71 he fought in the Franco-German War and then studied in Berlin . In 1874 he was promoted to Dr. phil. doctorate and in the same year received an assistant position at the Geodetic Institute in Berlin. Here he participated in observations and calculations for the Hessian, Rhenish and Brandenburg-Thuringian triangulation networks.

In the autumn of 1877, Lamp moved to the Kiel observatory as the second observator and calculator . In 1881 he completed his habilitation at the University of Kiel. In 1883 he became the observatory's first observer. After the death of the observatory director Adalbert Krueger in 1896, Lamp temporarily took over his position, but problems arose there. In 1897 he therefore applied to the Geodetic Institute in Potsdam for a leave of absence. Here he revised azimuthal observations made in the Harz Mountains , with which the shape of the geoid in the Harz Mountains and the surrounding regions had been determined.

In December 1889, the University of Kiel appointed Lamp as associate professor. He himself felt isolated and saw his situation as unsatisfactory. In August 1900 he therefore traveled to German East Africa as the Imperial Commissioner for the Foreign Office . He was part of an expedition to regulate the borders in the area of ​​Lake Kiwu, which was supposed to make astronomical border determinations. The work should take two years.

Lamp had completed most of his duties in eight months. This included determining the length of the important route crossing point Tabora. During this work, which remained unfinished, he died of a stroke. He was buried in Ischangi Station.

Scientific achievements

Lamp dealt with the science of coments. He determined the orbit of comet 1891 I and created a system of elements over Brorsen's comet, known since 1846 and since 1879, and tried to determine the position for its reappearance. On February 15, 1896, one day after Charles Dillon Perrine , he discovered the comet 1896 I. It is named "Lamp-Perrine" after the discoverers.

From 1884 Lamp dealt with revisions and follow-up observations for the Helsingfors-Gotha zones. During his time in Kiel he was part of the editorial team of the Astronomical News and worked in the astronomical central office, where he was responsible for securing comet discoveries. He also taught mathematics at the Kiel Naval School and in 1878 translated “De geodaetiske Hovedpunkter og deres co-ordinator”, which G. Zachariae had written in Danish in 1876 and which was considered an important work of geodesy.

family

On November 4, 1878, Lamp married Sophia Schütt in Brodersby (born September 1, 1858 in Brodersby; † April 3, 1945 in Kiel). The couple had two sons and three daughters. The daughter Hulda (born September 13, 1879 in Kiel; † April 3, 1945 there) married the lawyer Hermann Luppe in 1901 . The son Bernhard Lamp (1881–1920) was a lawyer and anarchist.

literature

• Fritz Treichel: Lamp, Ernst . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 3. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1974, pp. 177-179

Web links

• Publications by E. Lamp in the Astrophysics Data System
• W. Foerster: Death notice. Astronomische Nachrichten, Volume 156, Issue 9, p. 159 (obituary to EA Lamp)