SKETCH OF FRIEDRICH W. A. ARGELANDER. 549 



SKETCH OF FRIEDRICH W. A. ARGELANDER. 



ARGELANDER, says Prof. E. Schoenfeld, was pre-eminently 

 an astronomical observer. In his youth he could handle 

 every instrument as he could his pen. With his great keenness 

 of vision, this occupation was attractive to him ; but he realized 

 that it was a means to an end. He found his life-work in collect- 

 ing materials for a theory of the universe. Most of his work in 

 Bonn was devoted to acquiring the completeness attainable under 

 the limited capacity of the instruments in use in the knowledge 

 of the fixed stars. To him we owe the demonstration of the 

 proper motion of the solar system through space, and one of the 

 fullest and most accurate of the older charts and catalogues a 

 work which remains a standard for reference. The materials for 

 our sketch are derived wholly from the biography published 

 shortly after his death by Prof. Schoenfeld, his successor at Bonn, 

 in the Vierteljahrsschrift der astronomischen Gesellschaft. 



FRIEDRICH WlLHELM AUGUST ARGELANDER Was born On the 



22d of March, 1799, at Memel, in East Prussia, and died at Bonn, 

 February 17, 1875. He was the son of the merchant Johann Gott- 

 fried Argelander, of descent on the father's side from Finland, 

 while his mother was German. The relations of the family with 

 the outer world favored the most careful training of the future 

 astronomer. The political conditions existing during his child- 

 hood brought him early into closer relations with the great world 

 than could have been expected to arise in the ordinary course of 

 events in the little village so remote from the capital. The Prus- 

 sian royal family had left Berlin after the unfortunate issue 

 of the campaign of 1806, and ultimately retired to Memel. The 

 crown prince, afterward King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and Prince 

 Friedrich lived in the house of Argelander's parents ; and, not- 

 withstanding the difference of three years and a half in their 

 ages, a warm and lasting friendship was formed between the 

 former and Argelander. Hardly less cordial was the relation of 

 Prince Wilhelm, the late Emperor of Germany. But the times 

 were in all other respects times of trial ; and because of this the 

 inner life was all the more richly developed. Argelander after- 

 ward attended the Gymnasium of Elbring, and, in 1813, the Col- 

 legium Fridericianum at Konigsberg. When, in 1817, he entered 

 the university he enrolled himself as a student in financial science, 

 and devoted himself earnestly to it ; but he soon found himself 

 more attracted to Bessel's astronomical lectures than to all the 

 others. 



Having made sufficient advance to undertake work of that 

 kind, he asked Bessel to intrust him with some of the calcula- 



