Karl Wilhelm Valentiner
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Johann Valentiner (born February 22, 1845 in Eckernförde , † April 1, 1931 in Berlebeck near Detmold ) was a German astronomer .
Life
Valentiner was the son of the clergyman Friedrich Wilhelm Valentiner and attended the St. Thomas School in Leipzig until 1863 . After graduating as Dr. phil. Valentiner took part in a successful German expedition to observe the passage of Venus on December 9, 1874 in Tschifu ( China ). In 1875 he took over the management of the Mannheim observatory . Since the observation conditions in the Mannheim city center were getting worse, Valentiner moved the observatory to Karlsruhe ( Volkssternwarte Karlsruhe ), which was approved by Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden in 1880 . However, the telescopes had to be temporarily housed in a hut in Karlsruhe's Nymphenpark. Much to the annoyance of Valentiner, who in the meantime had been appointed professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe , no new observatory was built in Karlsruhe because the decision was made to locate it on the Königstuhl near Heidelberg .
After the establishment of the “Grand Ducal Bergsternwarte” (today's State Observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl ) in 1898, Valentiner took over the department for astrometry , which competed with the astrophysics department under Max Wolf . In 1909 Valentiner retired , after which the two departments were merged under the direction of Wolf. He was also a professor of astronomy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg .
He was married to Anna Isis Elisabeth, geb. Lepsius (1848–1919), the daughter of Carl Richard Lepsius . The physicist Siegfried Valentiner and the art historian Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner were the couple's sons.
Works
- Concise dictionary of astronomy in four volumes , Breslau (digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3, Part 1 , Volume 3, Part 2 , Volume 4 )
- Astronomical images , Leipzig, 1881
Web links
- Publications by W. Valentiner in the Astrophysics Data System
- L. Courvoisier: Wilhelm Valentiner. Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol. 243 (1931), p. 43. (Obituary)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Richard Sachse, Karl Ramshorn, Reinhart Herz: The teachers of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1832-1912. The high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1845–1912 . BG Teubner Verlag, Leipzig 1912, p. 41.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Valentiner, Karl Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Valentiner, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Johann (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 22, 1845 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Eckernförde |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 1, 1931 |
| Place of death | Berlebeck |