Wilhelm Werner (geodesist)

Wilhelm Werner, 1907, photo by Rudolf Dührkoop

Wilhelm Werner (born June 13, 1850 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia ; † May 12, 1915 in Berlin ) was a German geodesist and university professor.

Live and act

After attending the secondary school in Erfurt and studying engineering at the trade academy in Berlin, he worked from 1873 as an assistant at the Geodetic Institute in Berlin under the direction of General Johann Jacob Baeyer . As such, he was confronted with various works in the geodetic section under Professor Richard Sadebeck, later under Professor Otto Börsch, which were part of the work plan for European earth surveying, such as triangulation , trigonometric height measurements and pole heights. In 1886 and 1887 he carried out the astronomical leveling in the Harz Mountains from Braunschweig to the Danish border to determine deviations from the perpendicular . In 1886 he was appointed professor of practical geometry and geodesy at the Technical University in Aachen as the successor to Friedrich Robert Helmert , who had moved to Potsdam . Here he took part in the surveying preparation and supervision of several dams, u. a. the Urfttalsperre in the Vordereifel. In 1902 he followed a call to the Technical University in Charlottenburg as professor of geodesy and successor to privy councilor Professor Richard Doergens . It was particularly important to him not only to teach the students entrusted to him theoretically, but also to provide them with practical experience. In 1905 he was given the status of a Privy Councilor. He was also awarded the Crown Order III in 1910 . Class and in 1913 with the Order of the Red Eagle III. Class excellent.

His final resting place is in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf .

font

• About the relationship of the zero direction chosen for the station adjustment. Publication of the Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute, Berlin 1880

literature

• H. Wolff: Wilhelm Werner †. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . Vol. 35, 1915, p. 688.
• Paul Gast: The Technical University of Aachen 1870-1920. A memorial . Aachen 1920, p. 251
• The Technical University of Berlin 1799–1924. Festschrift . Berlin 1925, p. 94.
• Hans Martin Klinkenberg: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen 1870–1970 . Stuttgart 1970, p. 258.
• Wolfgang Torpe: History of geodesy in Germany . Berlin 2007, p. 286.

Web links

• Short biography on the homepage of the Geodetic Institute of RWTH ( Memento from June 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )