Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers
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This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (February 2012) |
| Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers | |
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 Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers |
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| Born | October 11, 1758 Arbergen |
| Died | March 2, 1840 (aged 81) Bremen |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Medicine Astronomy |
| Known for | Olbers' paradox Pallas Vesta |
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers (/ˈoʊlbərz/; October 11, 1758 – March 2, 1840) was a German physician and astronomer.
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Life and career[edit]
Olbers was born in Arbergen, today part of Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen. After his graduation in 1780, he began practicing medicine in Bremen. At night he dedicated his time to astronomical observation, making the upper story of his home into an observatory. He also devised the first satisfactory method of calculating cometary orbits.
On March 28, 1802, Olbers discovered and named the asteroid Pallas. Five years later, on March 29, 1807, he discovered the asteroid Vesta, which he allowed Carl Friedrich Gauss to name. As the word "asteroid" was not yet coined, the literature of the time referred to these minor planets as planets in their own right. He proposed that the asteroid belt, where these objects lay, was the remnants of a planet that had been destroyed. The current view of most scientists is that tidal effects from the planet Jupiter disrupted the planet-formation process in the asteroid belt.
On March 6, 1815, Olbers also discovered a periodic comet, now named after him (formally designated 13P/Olbers).
Olbers was deputed by his fellow citizens to assist at the baptism of Napoleon II of France on June 9, 1811, and he was a member of the corps legislatif in Paris 1812–1813. He died in Bremen aged 81. He was twice married, and one son survived him.
Olbers' paradox, described by him in 1823 (and then reformulated in 1826), states that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the supposition of an infinite and eternal static universe.
In 1804 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London [1] and in 1827 was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Honors[edit]
The following celestial features are named for him:
- 13P/Olbers is a periodic comet.
- Asteroid 1002 Olbersia.
- The crater Olbers on the Moon.
- Olbers, a 200-km-diameter dark albedo feature on Vesta's surface
References[edit]
- ^ "Library and archive catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 2012-03-06.
Further reading[edit]
- Cunningham, C. J. (2006). The Origin of the Asteroids: Olbers versus Regner. Star Lab Press. ISBN 0-9708162-5-1.
- Bessel, F. W. (1845). "Über Olbers. Von Herrn Geh. – Rath Bessel". Astronomische Nachrichten 22 (18): 265. Bibcode:1845AN.....22..265B. doi:10.1002/asna.18450221802.
- William Herschel (1800–1814). "Observations on the Nature of the New Celestial Body Discovered by Dr. Olbers, and of the Comet Which Was Expected to Appear Last January in Its Return from the Sun". Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1: 271–272. doi:10.1098/rspl.1800.0148.
- Lynn, W. T. (1907). "The Discovery of Vesta". The Observatory 30: 103–105. Bibcode:1907Obs....30..103L.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. – see, for instance, "Olbers," Britannica
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