August Ritter

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Georg Dietrich August Ritter (born December 11, 1826 in Lüneburg ; † February 26, 1908 there ) was a German professor of mechanics and astrophysicist . He developed the Ritter intersection method for calculating bar forces in trusses and made fundamental contributions to the physics of stars.

Life

August Ritter studied from 1843 to 1846 in Hannover , and from 1850 to 1853 in Göttingen , where he also with a thesis on the principle of least constraint doctorate . He then became a teacher at the Hanover Polytechnic in 1856 . In October 1870, Ritter became the first holder of the chair for engineering mechanics and mechanics at the TH Aachen . He stayed in Aachen until his retirement in 1899. In 1903 he returned to his hometown Lüneburg, where he died in 1908. He bequeathed a large part of his book estate to the library of the TH Aachen. Some of his textbooks have also been published in English and French. The successor to August Ritter on the chair for mechanics at the RWTH Aachen was Arnold Sommerfeld .

Ritter had been a member of the Corps Saxonia Göttingen since 1851 .

Contribution to the theory of star structure

From 1878 to 1889, Ritter published a series of 18 treatises in Wiedemann's Annalen with the title Investigations on the Constitution of Gaseous World Bodies and in 1879 the monograph Applications of Mechanical Theory of Heat on Cosmological Problems , which essentially consists of the content of the first five of these treatises. In this work, Ritter starts from the hypothesis that the stars are polytropic gas spheres, i.e. that the laws of ideal gas apply. From these assumptions, he derived the following results, among others:

The importance of August Ritter's work on stellar astrophysics is made clear by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's description : "From this very brief and inadequate summary of the important results that are contained in Ritter's papers, it should be clear that almost the entire foundation for the mathematical theory of stellar structure was laid by him. ". The role that Ritter played in the overall context of the development of the physics of star structure is also illustrated in Giora Shaviv's book The Life of Stars, The Controversial Inception and Emergence of the Theory of Stellar Structure .

Honors

In 1892 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

For his engineering achievements he was awarded the Dr. Ing. E. h. awarded by the TH Dresden "in recognition of his fundamental and excellent work in the field of technical mechanics and the statics of building structures".

The knight crater and the neighboring knight grooves on the moon are named after knight .

Fonts

  • About the principle of the smallest compulsion . Dieterich, Göttingen 1853 (inaugural dissertation, Academica Gottingensia Ann. 1853/1854).
  • Elementary theory and calculation of iron roof and bridge constructions . Rümpler, Hanover 1863.
  • Technical mechanics textbook . 8th edition. Baumgärtner, Leipzig 1900 ( digitized in the Google book search - 1st edition 1865).
  • Textbook of Higher Mechanics . 3. Edition. 1st part: Textbook of analytical mechanics ( digitized in the Google book search); 2nd part: Textbook of engineering mechanics ( digitized in the Google book search). Baumgärtner, Leipzig 1899 (1st edition 1873).
  • On the Constitution of Gaseous Celestial Bodies . In: Astrophysical Journal . tape 8 , no. 12 , 1898, pp. 293 .
  • Applications of mechanical heat theory to cosmological problems . Baumgärtner, Leipzig 1882.
  • The propagation of the water waves . In: Journal of the Association of German Engineers . No. 36 , 1892, p. 934-954 .

literature

  • Robert Emden : gas balls. Applications of mechanical heat theory to cosmological and meteorological problems . Teubner, Leipzig 1907, p. 463-487 .
  • Ahlenstiel: In memory of the honorary member of the Association of the Secret Government, Prof. Dr. ing. August Ritter . In: Annual books of the Lüneburg natural science association . tape XVIII , 1910, p. 65 .
  • Conrad Matschoss : men of technology. A biographical manual . VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1925, p. 227-228 .
  • Paul Trommsdorff: The faculty of the Technical University of Hanover 1831-1931 . Hanover 1931, p. 13 .
  • Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar : An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure . University of Chicago Press, 1939 (Reprint Dover Publications 1967, pp. 177-179).
  • Oliver Schwarz: On the historical development of the theory of the internal structure of the stars from 1861 to 1926 . In: Publication of the Archenhold observatory . No. 22 . Berlin-Treptow 1992, p. 68-77 .
  • Oliver Schwarz: August Ritter and the first theory of the structure and development of fixed stars as convective gas spheres . In: NTM International Journal of History & Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology & Medicine . tape 1 , no. 1 , December 1993, pp. 137-145 .
  • Georg Knittel:  Ritter, August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 662 ( digitized version ).
  • Jean-Louis Tassoul, Monique Tassoul: A Concise History of Solar and Stellar Physics . Princeton University Press , 2004, pp. 77-80, 251-253 .
  • Giora Shaviv: The Life of Stars, The Controversial Inception and Emergence of the Theory of Stellar Structure . Springer , Berlin, Heidelberg 2009, pp. 34, 36-38, 40, 44, 135, 149 .
  • Klaus Rohe: The beginnings of the theory of star formation in the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century - illustrated by the work of Jonathan H. Lane, August Ritter and Robert Emden . In: Journal for Astronomy . No. 58 , 2016, p. 118-120 .
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium , Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 1053 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Martin Klinkenberg (ed.), Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen 1870–1970 (with separate volumes, tables and overviews), Oscar Bek Verlag, Stuttgart 1970, overview 1a
  2. ^ Hasso von Etzdorf, Wolfgang von der Groeben , Erik von Knorre: Directory of the members of the Corps Saxonia zu Göttingen and the Landsmannschaft Saxonia (1840–1844) as of February 13, 1972. p. 14.
  3. ↑ Oliver Schwarz: On the historical development of the theory of the internal structure of the stars from 1861 to 1926. P. 163.
  4. ↑ August Ritter: Applications of the mechanical heat theory to cosmological problems. P. 20.
  5. ↑ August Ritter: Applications of the mechanical heat theory to cosmological problems. P. 32.
  6. ↑ Jonathan Homer Lane: On the theoretical temperature of the sun, under the hypothesis of a gaseous mass maintaining its volume by its internal heat and depending on the laws of gases as known to terrestrial experiments . In: American Journal of Science. Series 2 . tape 50 , no. 148 , 1870, ISSN  0002-9599 , pp. 57-74 , doi : 10.2475 / ajs.s2-50.148.57 .
  7. ↑ August Ritter: Applications of the mechanical heat theory to cosmological problems. Pp. 65-71.
  8. ↑ August Ritter: Applications of the mechanical heat theory to cosmological problems. Pp. 71-74.
  9. ↑ Oliver Schwarz: On the historical development of the theory of the internal structure of the stars from 1861 to 1926. P. 75–78.
  10. ^ Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure . University of Chicago Press, 1939 (Reprint Dover Publications 1967, p. 179)
  11. ^ Giora Shaviv: The Life of Stars, The Controversial Inception and Emergence of the Theory of Stellar Structure . Springer, 2009, pp. 34, 36-38, 40, 44, 135, 149
  12. ↑ Member entry by August Ritter at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 24, 2016.
  13. ^ Conrad Matschoss : Men of Technology, a biographical handbook. VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1925, p. 228.
personal data
SURNAME Knight, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritter, Georg Dietrich August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and astrophysicist, university lecturer for mechanics
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Luneburg
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1908
Place of death Luneburg