Max Caspar

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Portrait of Max Caspar (source: Kepler Society).

Max Caspar (born May 7, 1880 in Friedrichshafen , † September 1, 1956 in Munich ) was a German astronomy historian and editor of the works of Johannes Kepler .

Life

Caspar attended the Latin school in Rottenburg am Neckar and the upper secondary school in Ehingen . From 1900 to 1904 he studied theology and mathematics in Tübingen and began practical theological training in Rottenburg after the theological state examination. From 1906 he continued to study mathematics at the Technical University of Stuttgart and then in Göttingen with Felix Klein and David Hilbert , before taking the teaching exams in Stuttgart in 1907/08 and receiving his doctorate in 1908 with Alexander von Brill in Tübingen (with a thesis on algebraic geometry, which he made in Göttingen). He was then a math teacher in Ravensburg(from 1909), Rottweil (from 1916, as a high school professor) and Cannstatt (1928 to 1934). He then devoted himself to editing Kepler's works until his death.

plant

He received the stimulus for his work with Kepler from Alexander von Brill, who also gave lectures on celestial mechanics. Caspar published German translations of Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum (Weltgeheimnis, 1923), Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy, 1929) and Harmonice Mundi (Weltharmonik, 1939). This had brought him the attention of Walther von Dycks , initiator of a new edition of Kepler's collected works at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich on the basis of the incomplete and now outdated first edition of Kepler's work by Christian von Frisch in the mid-19th century. When van Dyck died in 1934, Caspar became the head of the edition. He published the following of the total of 26 volumes (all at Beck-Verlag in Munich):

  • Vol. 1: Mysterium Cosmographicum, De Stella Nova, 1938
  • Vol. 3: Astronomia Nova, 1937
  • Vol. 4: Kleiner Schriften 1602/1611, Dioptrice, 1941 (together with Hammer)
  • Vol. 6: Harmonice Mundi, 1940
  • Vol. 7: Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, 1953
  • Vol. 13: Letters 1590–1599, 1945
  • Vol. 14: Letters 1599-1603, 1949
  • Vol. 15: Letters 1604-1607, 1951
  • Vol. 16: Letters 1607-1611, 1954
  • Vol. 17: Letters 1612-1620, 1955
  • Vol. 18: Letters 1620-1630, 1954.

After Caspar's death, his long-time colleague Franz Hammer took over the management of the edition. Caspar was the leading Kepler specialist and wrote the first comprehensive biography of Kepler, edited the first volume of the Kepler bibliography and translated Kepler's Latin letters.

On Caspar's initiative, the house in which Kepler was born in Weil der Stadt was bought, renovated and opened as the Kepler Museum in 1940 by the specially founded Keplerhaus association (now the Kepler Society ) . Caspar was the first chairman of the Kepler Society.

In the 1940s he was also chairman of the Copernicus Commission, which was working on a complete edition (see Nicolaus Copernicus Complete Edition ).

Caspar was an honorary doctor from the University of Tübingen . In 1943 he received the Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in silver and was a member of the Leopoldina from 1941 . In 1940 he became an honorary citizen of Weil der Stadts .

Fonts

(Author or publisher, unless otherwise stated)

  • Johannes Kepler: Collected Works , 22 vols. (In 26). Beck, Munich, 1937–2017
  • About the representability of the homomorphic families of forms by Poincaré Z-series. Inaugural dissertation at the University of Tübingen, Noske, Borna / Leipzig, 1908
  • Johannes Kepler's scientific and philosophical position. In: Corona. 5 (1934/35), pp. 293-325
  • with Walther von Dyck: Johannes Kepler in his letters. 2 vols. Oldenbourg, Munich / Berlin, 1930
  • with Ludwig Rothenfelder, Martha List, Jürgen Hamel: Bibliographia Kepleriana. Beck, Munich, Vol. 1 2.A. 1968, Vol. 2 1998
  • Johannes Kepler. GNT-Verlag, Stuttgart, 4th A. 1995 (English translation Dover, New York, 1959)

literature

  • Bruno Effinger: Max Caspar and Franz Hammer. Two important Kepler researchers from Upper Swabia . In: Bad Saulgauer Hefte zur Stadtgeschichte und Heimatkunde , 14 (2000), pp. 34–48
  • Otto Volk: Max Caspar . In: German Mathematicians Association (ed.): Annual report of the German Mathematicians Association . tape 62 . Teubner, 1960, ISSN  0012-0456 , p. 93-98 ( uni-goettingen.de ).
  • Franz Hammer: A life in the service of Kepler research. in: Bernhard Sticker, Friedrich Klemm (Ed.): Paths to the History of Science , Vol. 1. Memoirs of Franz Hammer, Joseph E. Hoffmann, Adolf Meyer-Abich , Martin Plessner, Hans Schimank , Johannes Steudel and Kurt Vogel . Contributions to the history of science and technology, Vol. 10. Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1969, pp. 9–24
  • Joseph W. Dauben, Christoph J. Scriba (Ed.): Writing the history of mathematics. Birkhäuser, Basel, 2002, p. 393

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Van Dyck obtained photocopies of Kepler's main estate in the Pulkowo observatory in Russia - Catherine the Great bought it in 1774 on the advice of Leonhard Euler .
  2. ↑ Research and Advances . Staff news. Awards. In: News sheet of the German Science and Technology, organ of the Reich Research Council . tape 19, 23/24 , 1943, pp. 252 .
personal data
SURNAME Caspar, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomy historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedrichshafen
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1956
Place of death Munich