CARL

LUDWIG

See also:

• CHRISTIAN
• CHRISTIAN, WILLIAM (1608-1663)

CHRISTIAN

See also:

• CARL LUDWIG CHRISTIAN RUMKER (1788—1862)

RUMKER (1788—1862)  , German astronomer, was born in Mecklenburg on the 28th of May 1788 . He served in the British navy from 1807 until 1817, and was director of the school of navigation at Hamburg from 1819 till 1820 . In 1821 he went to New South Wales as astronomer at the observatory built at Parramatta by Sir Thomas Brisbane . He returned to Europe in 1830 and took charge of the observatory at Hamburg . His chief work was concerned with the cataloguing of stars: a preliminary catalogue of the stars of the S. hemisphere was published in 1832 at Hamburg, and in 1846—52 he published his great catalogue of 12,000 stars . In 1857 he went to reside at Lisbon, where he died on the 21st of December 1862 . His son, GEORGE FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1832—1900), born on the 31st of December 1832, at Hamburg, was astronomer at the observatory at Durham, England, from 1853 to 1856 . He then became assistant at the Hamburg observatory, and in 1862 was appointed director of the same institution . From 1884 he was the Hamburg delegate for the International Earth Measurement . He died on the 3rd of March 1900 .