Karl Stumpff (astronomer)

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Karl Johann Nikolaus Stumpff (born May 17, 1895 in Schleswig , † November 10, 1970 in Göttingen ) was a German astronomer.

Stumpff was the son of a master carpenter (who died in 1909) and graduated from high school in Flensburg in 1914 . He then studied (interrupted by the First World War with service at the Red Cross) in Göttingen ( Johannes Franz Hartmann , Leopold Ambronn , Emil Wiechert ) and Kiel ( Paul Harzer ). In 1922 he received his doctorate in Göttingen ( theory of periodograms and their applicability to the analysis of moon movement). The dissertation also resulted in a photographic apparatus for finding such periods in the observation data (e.g. position of the earth's axis of rotation, sunspots, star brightness), which Stumpff used from 1925 as an assistant at the Wroclaw observatory. In 1927 he completed his habilitation in Breslau. In 1934 he became an observer at the Meteorological Institute in Berlin, where he was supposed to apply his period studies, and in 1935 he became an extraordinary associate professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . In 1942 he became associate professor for astronomy at the University of Graz and director of the Graz University Observatory . There he turned to the investigations into celestial mechanics that had already begun in Breslau, for which he is best known.

After the Second World War , in 1946, he had to leave Austria and was professor for spherical astronomy, orbit determination and celestial mechanics at the University of Göttingen in 1952 until his retirement in 1959 . In 1961 and 1966/67 he lectured and worked at NASA in Washington, DC, in particular on methods of determining orbit.

In addition to his textbook on celestial mechanics, he also wrote popular science books. Among other things, he wrote a complete revision of the classic "The Miracles of Heaven", which was first published in 1834 by Joseph Johann von Littrow .

The asteroid (3105) Stumpff is named after him.

Fonts

  • Basics and methods of period research . Berlin 1937
  • Determination and reality of periodicities. Correlation calculation. In: Handbook of Geophysics. 1940
  • Tables and exercises for harmonic analysis and periodogram calculation. Berlin 1939
  • New theory and methods of the ephemeris calculation. Treatises of the German Academy of Sciences 1947
  • New ways of calculating the orbit of celestial bodies. In: Advances in Physics. Vol. 1, 1954, pp. 557-596
  • Geographical localization. In: University books for physics. Berlin 1955
  • Celestial mechanics. 3 volumes, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1959, 1965, 1974
  • The earth as a planet. Springer, Berlin 1939 and 1955 (= Understandable Science. Volume 42).
  • The clockwork of heaven. Stuttgart 1942, 1944
  • Complete revision of Joseph Johann von Littrow's Die Wunder des Himmels. Bonn 1963 (11th edition of this book in total)
  • Fischer Lexicon Astronomy. 1957, 1972
  • Astronomy versus astrology. 1955

literature

  • J. Wempe: Obituary. in the Astronomische Nachrichten Vol. 294, 1973, p. 271. ( online )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stumpff, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stumpff, Karl Johann Nikolaus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Schleswig
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1970
Place of death Goettingen