FRANZ

See also:

• FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )

FRIEDRICH

See also:

• ERNST, HEINRICH WILHELM (1814–1865)

ERNST

See also:

• FRANZ FRIEDRICH ERNST BRUNNOW (1821-1891)

BRUNNOW (1821-1891)  , German astronomer, *as born in Berlin on the 18th of November 1821 . Between the ages of eight and eighteen he attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm gymnasium . In 1839 he entered the university of Berlin, where he studied mathematics, astronomy and physics, as well as chemistry, philosophy and philology . After graduating as Ph.D. in 1843, he took an active part in685 astronomical work at the Berlin observatory, under the direction of J . F . Encke, contributing numerous important papers on the orbits of comets and minor planets to the Astronomische Nachrichten . In 1847 he was appointed director of the Bilk observatory, near Dusseldorf, and in the following year published the well-known Memoire sur la comete elliptique de De Vico, for which he received the gold medal of the Amsterdam Academy . In 1851 he succeeded J . G . Galle as first assistant at the Berlin observatory, and accepted in 1854 the post of director of the new observatory at Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A . Here he published, 1858–1862, a journal entitled Astronomical Notices, while his tables of the minor planets Flora, Victoria and Iris were severally issued in 1857, 1859 and 1869 . In 186o he went, as associate director of the observatory, to Albany, N .

Y.; but returned in 1861 to Michigan, and threw himself with vigour into the work of studying the astronomical and

physical constants of the observatory and its instruments . In 1863 he resigned its direction and returned to Germany; then, on the death of Sir W . R . Hamilton in 1865, he accepted the post of Andrews professor of astronomy in the university of Dublin and astronomer-royal of Ireland . His first undertaking at the Dublin observatory was the erection of an equatorial telescope to carry the fine object-glass presented to the university by Sir James South; and on its completion he began an import-ant series of researches on stellar parallax . The first, second and third parts of the Astronomical Observations and Researches made at Dunsink contain the results of these labours, and include discussions of the distances of the stars a Lyrae, v Draconis, Groombridge 183o, 85 Pegasi, and Bradley 3077, and of the planetary nebula H. iv . 37 . In 1873 the observatory, on Dr Brunnow's recommendation, was provided with a first-class transit-circle, which he proceeded to test as a preliminary to commencing an extended programme of work with it, but in the following year, in consequence of failing health and eyesight, he resigned the post and retired to Basel . In 188o he removed to Vevey, and in 1889 to Heidelberg, where he died on the zoth of August 1891 . The permanence of his reputation was secured by the merits of his Lehrbuch der spharischen Astronomic, which were at once and widely appreciated . In 186o part i. was translated into English by Robert Main, the Radcliffe observer at Oxford; Brunnow himself published an English version in 1865; it reached in the original a 5th edition in 1881, and was also translated into French, Russian, Italian and Spanish . See Month .

Notices

Roy . Asti . Society, lii . 23o; J . C . Poggendorff's Biog . Lit . Handworterbuch, Bd. iii . ; Nature, xliv . 449 .