Background
He was born on the 11th of October 1758 at Arbergen, a village near Bremen. Olbers was the eighth of the sixteen children of Johann Jürgen Olbers, a Protestant minister.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/116591008X/?tag=2022091-20
He was born on the 11th of October 1758 at Arbergen, a village near Bremen. Olbers was the eighth of the sixteen children of Johann Jürgen Olbers, a Protestant minister.
He studied medicine at Gottingen, 1777-1780, attending at the same time Kaestner's mathematical course; and in 1779, while watching by the sick-bed of a feilow-student, he devised a method of calculating cometary orbits which made an epoch in the treatment of the subject, and is still extensively used.
The treatise containing this important invention was made public by Baron von Zach under the title Ueber die leichteste und bequemste Methode die Bahn eines Cometen zu berechnen (Weimar, 1797). A table of eighty-seven calculated orbits was appended, enlarged by Encke in the second edition (1847) to 178, and by Galle in the third (1864) to 242.
Olbers settled as a physician in Bremen towards the end of 1781, and practised actively for above forty years, finally retiring on the 16t of January 1823.
The greater part of each night (he never slept more than four hours) was meantime devoted to astronomy, the upper portion of his house being fitted up as an observatory. He paid special attention to comets, and that of 1815 (period seventy-four years) bears his name in commemoration of its detection by him.
He also took a leading part in the discovery of the minor planets, re-identified Geres on the 16t of January 1802, and detected Pallas on the 28th of March following. His bold hypothesis of their origin by the disruption of a primitive large planet (Monatliche Correspondenz, vi. 88), although now discarded, received countenance from the finding of Juno by Harding, and of Vesta by himself, in the precise regions of Cetus and Virgo where the nodes of such supposed planetary fragments should be situated.
Olbers was deputed by his fellow-citizens to assist at the baptism of the king of Rome on the 9th of June 1811, and he was a member of the corps legislatif in Paris 1812-1813. After the death of his daughter in 1818 and of his second wife in 1820, he retired from active medical practice to devote the rest of his life to astronomy.
He died on the 2nd of March 1840, at the age of eighty-one.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
He grew up in a Protestant family.
He was a member of Museum, the scientific society in Bremen, and through the years gave over eighty lectures there (of which only one was on a medical subject).
Quotes from others about the person
Bessel’s eulogy, written in 1845, ended: “He was to me the most noble friend. With wise and fatherly counsel he guided my youth; 171 letters which I possess from him are written proof of my right to extend my devotion beyond the limits of science”
He was twice married, and one son survived him. In 1785 Olbers married Dorothea Köhne, who died a year later at the birth of their daughter. In 1789 he married Anna Adelheid Lurssen, by whom he had one son.