Wolfgang Strohmeier

Wolfgang Strohmeier (born January 13, 1913 in Kassel , † March 26, 2004 in Bamberg ) was a German astronomer .

Life

Wolfgang Strohmeier was born in Kassel as the son of the city's chief engineer F. Strohmeier. After school education up to the Abitur at the Wilhelmsgymnasium followed in 1932 the study of astronomy at the University of Berlin . The doctorate took place in the summer of 1938. Since 1936 and even after his doctorate, he has published observational results of variable and red-colored stars. In 1939 he married his wife Käthe, with whom he had two daughters. When the war began in 1939, he was immediately drafted into the Wehrmacht and deployed in Poland, France and Africa. After being wounded, which ended his war mission, he was Paul ten Bruggencate's assistant at the Göttingen University Observatory from 1944 to 1947. This was followed in 1948 (until 1953) as an observer for the Bavarian Commission for International Earth Surveying at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. On January 1, 1954, he was appointed director of the Remeis observatory in Bamberg. The extensive task of modernizing the institute structurally and instrumentally awaited him - this was also achieved through his tireless search for sponsors. After completing his habilitation, he was a university lecturer from 1962 and was now able to conduct his training independently at the Remeis observatory, which has since become an astronomical institute at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg . In 1969 he became an adjunct professor. He held variable colloquia for the IAU in 1959, 1962, 1965 and 1977 , which brought the institute to international research. In 1980 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his efforts to modernize the observatory . Wolfgang Strohmeier died as a result of his longstanding Parkinson's disease .

Web links

• Reference to the director of the Bamberg observatory
• Obituary in Communications of the Astronomical Society, Vol. 87, p.13