564 JOHANN FRIEDKICH JULIUS SCHMIDT. 



his great services in the cause of science. Learned Academies abroad 

 placed iiis name upon their distinguished rolls, and Universities at 

 home crowned him with their highest honors. He was elected a 

 Foreign Honorary Member of this Academy, May 28, 1867. His 

 life was protracted for a f(;w years after his physical strength was 

 exhausted and his mind had been overshadowed by disastrous eclipse. 



JOHANN FRIEDRICH JULIUS SCHMIDT. 



JonANN Friedricii Jdlius Schmidt was born at Eutin, in the 

 Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, October 25, 1825, and was educated at 

 the Hamburg Gymnasium. He developed very early in life a taste 

 for the observation of natural phenomena, which was directed into 

 astronomical channels, at the age of fourteen 3'ears, by his coming into 

 possession of a copy of Schroter's work on the Moon, which so struck 

 his attention that he at once began his first attempts at astronomical 

 observation by sketching the lunar surface with a small telescope con- 

 structed by his father, which he steadied against a lamp-post. This 

 work soon became his chief occupation ; but was carried on with im- 

 ))roved facilities, first by a telescope lent him by a gentleman uiter- 

 fcsted in the progress of the young, astronomer, and afterwards by the 

 use of the instruments at the Altona and Hamburg observatories, to 

 which latter {)lace he went as an assistant to Riimker in 1842. In 

 1845 Schmidt went to Bilk, near Dusseldorf, where Benzenberg had 

 established an observatory for the observation of meteors and the 

 search for intra-Mercurial planets. His instrumental facilities here, 

 however, were much restricted, the solicitude of Benzenberg lest the 

 polish and lacquer of the principal telescope should suffer by handling 

 practically prohibiting its use. Benzenberg died in 1846, and Schmidt 

 went to Bonn as assistant to Argelander. Here his lunar work was 

 somewhat interrupted, his time being largely occui)icd with observa- 

 tions of planets and comets, and with the meridian circle. He made, 

 on the occasion of the total eclipse of the sun, July 28, 1851, impor- 

 tant observations, in East Prussia, with leference to the phenomena 

 Avhicli are now identified with tlie chromosphere, revealed more dis- 

 tinctly since that time by the spectroscope. 



Later, Schmidt was appointed, on Argelander's recommendation, 

 to the charge of a private observatory established at Ohnutz by 

 Baron von Unkrechtberg, provided with a small meridian circle 

 and a five-inch refractor, with smaller telescopes and subsidiary 

 apparatus. He began work here in June, 1853, and actively prose- 



