THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 



177 



he held as a kind of corresponding centre of European 

 astronomy, and as the leader of a large school of German 

 astronomers of this century. 1 Olbers was a practising 

 physician at Bremen, 2 where he followed astronomical 

 studies as a recreation, making himself eminent by great 

 services to science, among them by his method of calcu- 

 lating the orbit of a comet : as the greatest of his services 

 he counted the fact of having discovered, trained, and 

 appreciated the rising genius of Bessel. 3 



1 Franz Xaver von Zach (1754- 

 1832) was a native of Pesth. After 

 having served in the Austrian artil- 

 lery, and taken to astronomy as a 

 favourite study, he spent some time 

 in Paris and London, and became 

 acquainted with Lalande, Laplace, 

 Herschel, Maskelyne, Ramsden, and 

 others. He was engaged by Duke 

 Ernest II. of Gotha in 1786 to 

 erect an observatory on the See- 

 berg near Gotha. This was com- 

 pleted in 1791. Here he trained a 

 number of younger astronomers, 

 and was the first to establish and 

 maintain a periodical specially de- 

 voted to astronomy. It was first 

 (1798) published under the title 

 ' Geographische Ephemeriden,' then 

 (1800-13) as 'Monatliche Corres- 

 pondenz zur Beforderung der Erd- 

 und Himmelskunde.' Lalande and 

 Gauss both testified to the use- 

 fulness of this international pub- 

 lication, without which Piazzi's 

 discovery (see p. 182, note 1) would 

 probably have been lost. See 

 Wolf, ' Gesch. d. Astronomic,' p. 

 764. 



2 Heinr. Wilh. Mat. Olbers (1758- 

 1840) was born near Bremen. He 

 followed astronomy as a private 

 study. He is mainly known by 

 his rediscovery of the first of the 

 smaller planets (see p. 182, note 1), 

 by his theory, once generally ac- 

 cepted, of the origin of the smaller 



VOL. I. 



planets through the disruption of a 

 primitive large planet, and by his 

 ' Abhandlung iiber die leichteste 

 und bequemste Methode die Bahn 

 eines Cometen aus einigen Beo- 

 bachtungen zu berechnen ' (1797). 

 In this work, by using Lambert's 

 equation, he succeeded in perfecting 

 the methods of Newton and his suc- 

 cessors so as actually to calculate 

 the elements of several comets. 

 This method is still in general use 

 (see Wolf, loc. cit., p. 519). 



3 Friedr. Wilh. Bessel (1784-1846) 

 attracted the attention of Olbers by 

 his mathematical abilities whilst em- 

 ployed as clerk in a shipping office 

 at Bremen. If Tobias Mayer's 

 lunar tables were remunerated and 

 published with English money, 

 Germany repaid the debt by the 

 industry of Bessel, who calculated 

 and reduced the observations made 

 by Bradley (1692-1762, Astronomer 

 Royal from 1742) at Greenwich 

 during the years 1750 to 1761. 

 They had been neglected and re- 

 mained unpublished till 1798, when 

 Olbers induced Bessel to make 

 them useful to science. This he 

 did by calculating from them some 

 of the most important and funda- 

 mental data of astronomy. After 

 many years of labour he brought out 

 his ' Fundamenta Astronomic pro 

 A. 1755 deducta ex observation - 

 ibus viri incomparabilis James 



M 



