Astronomer geophysicist physicist
Hansteen was born on September 26, 1784 in Oslo, Norway, the son of Johannes Mathias Hansteen (1744-1792) and his wife Anne Cathrine Treschow (1754-1829). He was the younger brother of writer Conradine Birgitte Dunker, and through her the uncle of Bernhard Dunker and Vilhelmine Ullmann, and granduncle of Mathilde Schjøtt, Ragna Nielsen and Viggo Ullmann. His mother was a first cousin of Niels Treschow.
Hansteen attended Oslo Cathedral School from the age of nine. He took the examen artium in 1802, and in 1803 he enrolled at the University of Copenhagen, where he originally studied law. He later took more interest in mathematics, estranged by the lack of universal validity of a country's laws compared to the mathematical laws. He had also been inspired by the lectures of Hans Christian Ørsted.
In 1806 Hansteen taught mathematics in the gymnasium of Frederiksborg, Zeeland, and in the following year he began the inquiries in terrestrial magnetism with which his name is especially associated. He took in 1812 the prize of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences for his reply to a question on the magnetic axes. Appointed lecturer in 1814, he was in 1816 raised to the chair of astronomy and applied mathematics in the university of Christiania. In 1819 Hansteen published a volume of researches on terrestrial magnetism, which was translated into German by P. T. Hanson, under the title of Untersuchungen uber den Magnetismus der Erde, with a supplement containing Beobachtungen der Abweichung und Neigung der Magnetnadel and an atlas. By the rules there framed for the observation of magnetical phenomena Hansteen hoped to accumulate analyses for determining the number and position of the magnetic poles of the earth. In prosecution of his researches he travelled over Finland and the greater part of his own country; and in 1828-1830 he undertook, in company with G. A. Erman, and with the co-operation of Russia, a government mission to Western Siberia. A narrative of the expedition soon appeared. Christopher Hansteen died in April 1873 in Christiania, and is buried at Gamle Aker kirkegård. The funeral took place at the University.
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(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (1818), member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1857), member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1822), Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1863), member of the board of the Royal Norwegian Society for Development, member of the board of the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
In May 1814 Hansteen married Johanne Cathrine Andrea Borch, a daughter of professor Caspar Abraham Borch. His wife died in 1840. Their daughter Aasta Hansteen became a notable women's rights campaigner. He was the paternal great-grandfather of Kristofer Hansteen and Edvard Heiberg Hansteen; trade unionist Viggo Hansteen was a later descendant.
