34 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SOME SELF-MADE ASTRONOMEES. 



By E. LAGEANGE. 



OUR purpose is to inquire briefly, illustrating our research by a 

 few eminent examples, bow men become astronomers, or, in 

 general, bow those wbo achieve distinction in that profession are di- 

 rected to it. No one is destined to astronomy from his childhood. 

 No fathers in forecasting the future of their sons ever think of pre- 

 paring them especially for so unpractical a business, one so far from 

 any of the roads to fortune as the study of the skies. Some particular 

 conditions, independent of parental views of the career their sons are 

 to follow, outside of anything that is contemplated in arranging the 

 course of their studies in school, must contribute to lead a youth to 

 consecrate his life to this pursuit. How, then, we ask again, does one 

 become an astronomer? Well, he begins by taking up some other 

 career that of watch-maker, for instance, or of writing-master, clergy- 

 man, revenue officer, carpenter, bookseller, doctor, or perhaps shep- 

 herd, musician, or tradesman ; and then, some day, if the thing is to 

 be, some little incident determines it : the die is cast, and he becomes 

 an astronomer. Nothing in particular is done ; there are no parental 

 lamentations or reproaches of friends who think you are a fool ; you 

 go your way, to the university if you can pay the cost, or straight to 

 the observatory of which you are to become the director, to the dis- 

 gust of the assiduous students who have been cramming for the ex- 

 aminations. This is the history of Hansen. He was watch-maker, and 

 was called in one day to a scientific man's house to repair a clock. 

 Having to wait a little while in the laboratory till the gentleman came 

 in, be casually picked up a book, which proved to be a geometry. The 

 man of science came in, and, finding him interested in the book, lent it 

 to him. ' Hansen devoured it ; the man lent him other books, and he 

 gave himself up to them as a miss would to a novel she was forbidden 

 to read. Two years after this, Hansen, at thirty years of age, was 

 director of the observatory at Gotha, where he performed his cele- 

 brated labors on the motions of the moon. 



Madler was a writing-master till he was forty-five years old, when 

 all at once it came into his head to make an astronomer of himself. 

 He obtained a place at the private observatory of Beer (brother of 

 Meyerbeer), where he drew a map of the moon. Shortly afterward, 

 be was placed by the Russian Government at the head of the Dorpat 

 Observatory, where he continued till his death, at the age of eighty- 

 three years. 



Brunhs, director of the Leipsic Observatory, who died a short time 

 ago, was found by Humboldt in a locksmith's shop in Berlin, and ob- 

 tained through his influence a place in the observatory. 



