Rolf Müller (astronomer)

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Rolf Hans Müller (born January 26, 1898 in Potsdam , † March 24, 1981 in Fort Lauderdale ) was a German astronomer .

Life

Rolf Müller was the son of the astronomer Gustav Müller (1851-1925) and the mother Johanna (née Schulteß, 1863-1945). After the end of the First World War, he studied astronomy, mathematics, physics, meteorology and philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1919 , where he received his doctorate in 1924 under Paul Guthnick with a thesis on the variable R Aquilae . He then became an assistant at the Astrophysical Observatory Potsdam , where he continued to work on variables.

In 1926 he took part in an expedition to Sumatra to observe the total solar eclipse of January 14, 1926 . From 1928 to 1930 he was the director of the German observatory in La Paz in Bolivia , where he had the task of completing the observations for the spectral survey of the Kapteyn calibration fields in the southern sky . In Bolivia he also investigated the astronomical alignment of prehistoric buildings.

On his return he became an observer at the Astrophysical Observatory. In the following years he was concerned with the analysis of the data obtained in South America, as well as with studies of the dark clouds of the Milky Way , for which he received the Klumpke Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1932 . From 1939 until the end of World War II, Müller served as a soldier, but was able to do his habilitation in Berlin during this time in 1941.

In 1946, after having worked for a short time at the Hamburg observatory, he was appointed head of the solar observatory on the Wendelstein by the American occupation forces , from 1949 an outstation of the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , a position that he held until his retirement in 1963.

Müller was married twice. From his first marriage in 1932 with the actress Eleonore Vespermann (née Droescher; 1889–1970, daughter of the director Georg Droescher ) he had a daughter and he had two stepchildren. A year after the death of his first wife, he married the photographer Carola Thimm (1901–1991), who survived him.

In addition to his work on solar physics , Müller is best known for his publications and research on topics related to archaeoastronomy . As one of the first in this field, he pointed out that conclusions from the orientations found are only meaningful if a large number of sites have been examined and so randomnesses can be excluded by using statistical methods. An introductory presentation of archaeoastronomical questions was the small book The sky above man from the Stone Age , published in 1970 .

He also made a contribution to popularizing astronomical subjects. From 1933 to 1943 he was one of the editors of the magazine Die Sterne . In addition, he wrote easily understandable books such as B. the astronomical ABC for everyone .

From 1928 he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society .

Fonts

In addition to numerous articles in scientific journals, Müller published monographs as well as some popular science books:

  • Investigations on the variable R Aquilae (dissertation, 1925)
  • Schwerd's observations of variable stars in the years 1823–1833 and 1849–1859 (1925)
  • The observation of variable stars (1935)
  • Celestial location on Nordic-Germanic soil (1936)
  • Photographic-photometric investigations into the color changes of mirastars (1938)
  • Astronomical ABC for everyone (1938; 2nd, verb. Edition 1950)
  • Solar research in the International Geophysical Year (1958)
  • Sun ABC (1958)
  • Astronomical Terms (1964)
  • The planets and their moons (1966)
  • The Sky Above Stone Age Man (1970)
  • Sun, moon and stars over the Inca Empire (1972)
  • Sun, satellites, comets & lightning: researchers at Wendelstein (1974)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From 1929 appeared in publications of the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam , ed. by Friedrich Becker.
  2. ^ Felix Schmeidler:  Müller, Rolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 336 ( digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Rolf Hans (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1981
Place of death Fort Lauderdale