Pawel Karlowitsch Sternberg

Pawel Karlowitsch Sternberg (ca.1910)

Pawel Karlowitsch Sternberg ( Russian Павел Карлович Штернберг; * March 21 ^July / April 2,  1865 ^greg. In Orjol ; † February 1, 1920 ^greg. In Moscow ) was a Russian astronomer , university professor and communist revolutionary of German descent.

Life

Sternberg's father, Karl Sternberg, came from the Duchy of Braunschweig and was a merchant in Oryol.

Sternberg attended the humanistic high school in Orjol with graduation in 1883 and then began studying at the University of Moscow (MGU) in the mathematics department of the physical- mathematical faculty . He was one of the best students of Fyodor Alexandrovich Bredichin . He loved music and joined the student orchestra. In May 1885 he graduated with a gold medal from the faculty for his work on the rotation of the Great Red Spot (GRF) of Jupiter . In the summer of that year he took part in an expedition to the Moscow Observatory to observe the solar eclipse of August 19, 1887 in Yuryevets . The expedition included Aristarch Apollonowitsch Belopolski , Jean Louis Nicolas Niesten from Brussels and Hermann Carl Vogel from Potsdam . In March 1888, Sternberg became Associate Assistant at the Krasnopresnenskaya Observatory in Moscow. He stayed at the MGU and prepared for a professorial career. In 1890 he became a private lecturer at the MGU. 1899-1900 he headed the commission for the development of an astronomy study program for middle educational institutions.

Sternberg's main focus was gravimetry . For his gravimetric measurements with the Repsold - swing , he received the medal of the Russian Geographical Society . 1892–1903 he examined in detail the geographical latitude of the Moscow observatory in connection with the polar movement . He used the results of his thesis, which he 1903 Master received his doctorate. Sternberg's photographic methods for observing binary stars were of particular importance .

During the Russian Revolution in 1905 , Sternberg secretly entered the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and joined the Bolsheviks . He participated in the underground work of the military technical office of the Moscow Party Committee in preparation for the Moscow uprising in December 1905. On the day of the suppressed uprising, he was on a foreign mission. Some of the weapons were kept in the observatory. In 1908 Sternberg was elected to the Moscow city duma via the list of Bolsheviks . In 1913 he received his doctorate in astronomy after defending his dissertation on applications of photography in astronomy . In 1914 he was appointed associate professor at MGU. In 1916 he became head of the Krasnopresnenskaya Observatory. In January 1917, he was elected full professor at the chair of astronomy and geodesy at the MGU. In addition, Sternberg was a professor at the advanced courses for women founded by Vladimir Ivanovich Guerrier .

After the February Revolution of 1917 , Sternberg took part in the deliberations of the Moscow Party Committee on the formation of armed groups. April 3rd ^July / April 16,  1917 ^greg. he listened to Lenin's speech in front of the Finnish train station in Petrograd and immediately afterwards went to the First All-Russian Astronomy Congress, where he was elected chairman because of his scientific work. In April he gave a report on the police at the regular meeting of the Moscow Party Committee, which was also attended by Felix Dzerzhinsky , Grigory Alexandrovich Ussievich and Rosalija Samoilovna Salkind , which dealt with the organization of a Red Guard and the arming of Moscow workers. A map of Moscow was hidden in a telescope of the observatory, copies of which the Moscow Party Committee now distributed to all Moscow Party cells. Shortly before the October Revolution in Moscow, Sternberg was appointed representative of the party center for the Samoskvorechye district, from which the bombardment of the Moscow Kremlin was to begin. The attack began at dawn on October 28th ^July. / November 10, 1917 ^greg. under Sternberg's direction. In November 1917 Sternberg became Moscow's military governor. In January 1918, he issued a letter of protection to the collections of the Darwin Museum, attesting the collections' highest scientific value.  

In March 1918 Sternberg became a deputy member of the College of the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR and head of the department for secondary schools. In July 1918 he took part in the preparation and implementation of the conference of university officials on questions of university reform. As a result of the intensification of the Russian civil war , he was sent to the front in September 1918 as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council and political commissar of the 2nd Army on the Eastern Front . Because of Sternberg's deteriorating health, at the Politburo meeting on April 18, 1919 , Leon Trotsky asked whether Sternberg would go on vacation in the south. In November and December 1919 Sternberg was involved in leading the operations of the 3rd and 5th Armies of the Eastern Front of the Red Army to conquer Omsk . While conquering the Irtysh he fell seriously ill and was taken to Moscow, where he soon died. He was buried in the Wagankowo Cemetery .

Pawel Sternberg was married to the revolutionary Varvara Nikolajewna Jakowlewa . The Sternberg Institute for Astronomy in Moscow, the asteroid (995) Sternberga and the Shternberg crater on the back of the moon are named after him.

Web links

• Pavel Shternberg in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Sternberg Institute: ШТЕРНБЕРГ Павел Карлови (accessed January 30, 2019).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} MGU: Штернберг Павел Карлович (accessed January 31, 2019).
3. ↑ А. Ю. Андреев, Д. А. Цыганков: Императорский Московский университет: 1755–1917: энциклопедический словарь . Российская политическая энциклопедия (РОССПЭН), Moscow 2010, ISBN 978-5-8243-1429-8 , p. 849-851 .
4. ↑ П. Г. Куликовский: Павел Карлович Штернберг . Nauka , 1965.
5. ↑ Политбюро ЦК РКП (б) - ВКП (б): Повестки дня заседаний. Т. 1. 1919-1929 . РОССПЭН, Moscow 2000, p. 31-32 .
6. ↑ Бережков В., Пехтерева С .: Женщины-чекистки . St. Petersburg, Moscow 2003, p. 12 .
7. ↑ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: Shternberg (Sternberg) (accessed January 31, 2019).