Richard Reinhard Emil Schorr

Richard Schorr

Discovered asteroids: 2

(869) Mellena	May 9, 1917
(1240) Centenaria	February 5, 1932

Richard Reinhard Emil Schorr (born  August 20, 1867 in Kassel , †  September 21, 1951 in Bad Gastein , Austria ) was a German astronomer and university professor .

Life

Schorr studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin as well as at the Technical University of Munich and then got a job in 1889 as an assistant in the editorial department of the journal Astronomische Nachrichten in Kiel. After two years, he first moved to the Volkssternwarte Karlsruhe as an assistant , and then a little later to the Astronomical Computing Institute in Berlin, which was still part of the Berlin observatory .

The director of the Hamburg observatory at the time , George Rümker , brought Schorr to Hamburg as an observer in 1892. Rümker, who at that time had just begun the move of the observatory to Hamburg-Bergedorf , suffered for years from a severe gout disease and died in 1900, so that Schorr had to continue and complete the move. Administrative matters were also dealt with on behalf of Schorr, so that at the end of the 19th century the observatory was effectively managed by him.

Richard Schorr was officially appointed director of the Hamburg observatory in 1902, where, among other things, he discovered two asteroids. In 1919 he was appointed full professor at the University of Hamburg .

In 1920 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina .

Schorr's astronomical interest was mainly in astrometry . He initiated several large star catalog programs at the Hamburg observatory:

• 1921, Second Catalog of the Astronomical Society, published from 1951
• 1922, Karl Rümker's Hamburg star directory 1845.0
• 1923, History of the Fixed Star Sky
• 1926, The Second Hamburg Star Directory for the Approach of the Minor Planet Eros

A second area of ​​interest was solar eclipse events. Schorr equipped several expeditions to total solar eclipses:

• 1905 in Algeria , location Souk Ahras
• 1907 in Central Asia , location Dschisak
• 1912 in the Lüneburg Heath (annular solar eclipse)
• 1914 to the Crimea , canceled because of the outbreak of the First World War
• 1923 to Mexico , location Passaje
• 1925 on the Atlantic with the Hapag steamer Liguria
• 1927 to Sweden , location Jokkmokk
• 1929 to the Philippines , location Cebu

Schorr also managed to bring the astro-optician Bernhard Schmidt to the Hamburg observatory and to give him the freedom to develop new telescope technologies. Schmidt invented the Schmidt telescope .

When the National Socialists took power in Germany, Schorr was dean of the University of Hamburg and 65 years old and had to give up his functions. In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler .

As a commission of experts found out in 2017, Schorr revealed numerous astrologers to the Gestapo . In 1933 he asked the Reich Ministry of the Interior “to put a stop to the astrological nonsense that was being torn down everywhere in the cleansing of public life” and was ready to “support this struggle in every way”. To do this, he had lectures by astrologers spied on and forwarded the reports to the Gestapo.

As his successor at the observatory, Schorr wanted Walter Baade , who worked in the USA, but who canceled after long hesitation. As a replacement for Baade, Schorr saw to it that Otto Heckmann was brought to the observatory against the resistance of the Nazi lecturers' association, who succeeded him in 1941.

The asteroid (1235) was named Schorria after Schorr ; his wife gave the asteroid (725) Amanda its name . The Schorr lunar crater is also named after him.

swell

• Homepage and picture archive of the AIP
• Report on the Hamburg observatory, Bergedorf

literature

• J. Schramm: Stars over Hamburg. The history of astronomy in Hamburg. 2nd, revised and expanded edition, Kultur- & Geschichtkontor , Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-9811271-8-8 .

Web links

• Publications by R. Schorr in the Astrophysics Data System
• Obituaries for R. Schorr in the Astrophysics Data System
• Newspaper article about Richard Reinhard Emil Schorr in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Member entry of Richard Schorr at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 25, 2016.
2. ^ Controversial astronomer. Richard Schorr and the Persecution of Astrologers. by Dirk Lorenzen ; Report on Deutschlandfunk on May 17, 2017, accessed on June 8, 2017.