Doppelmayr atudied at the University of Altdorf from 1696 to 1698.
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
For a brief while in 1700 Doppelmayr attended the University of Halle.
Career
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
Frontispiece of Atlas Coelestis.
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
Doppelmayr's map of the southern celestial hemisphere, c. 1730 titled: "Hemisphaerium Coeli Australe in quo Fixarum loca secundum Eclipticae ductum ad anum 1730."
Vignette of Greenwich Observatory within Doppelmayr's southern celestial hemisphere map.
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
Vignette of Rundetarn Observatory as included in the map of the southern celestial hemisphere by astronomer and cartographer Johann Doppelmayr, c. 1730.
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
Doppelmayr's work, Motus planetarum superiorum.
Gallery of Johann Doppelmayr
Doppelmayr's work, Phaenomina.
Achievements
The crater Doppelmayer on the Moon.
Membership
Royal Society
Doppelmayr was a member of the Royal Society of London.
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Doppelmayr was a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Berlin Academy
Doppelmayr was a member of the Berlin Academy.
Russian Academy of Sciences
Doppelmayr was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Doppelmayr's map of the southern celestial hemisphere, c. 1730 titled: "Hemisphaerium Coeli Australe in quo Fixarum loca secundum Eclipticae ductum ad anum 1730."
Vignette of Rundetarn Observatory as included in the map of the southern celestial hemisphere by astronomer and cartographer Johann Doppelmayr, c. 1730.
Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr was a German mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer wrote on astronomy, geography, cartography, spherical trigonometry, sundials and mathematical instruments, and is best known for his Atlas Coelestis.
Background
Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr was born on September 27, 1677, in Nuremberg, Germany. His father, Johann Siegmund Doppelmayr, was a merchant who made a hobby of experiments in physics and, according to his son, was the first to introduce into Nuremberg an air pump equipped with a lever and standing upright “like a flower vase.”
Education
After graduating from the Aegidien Gymnasium, Doppelmayr entered the University of Altdorf in 1696 with the intention of studying law; but there he heard the lectures on mathematics and physics of Johann Cristoph Sturm, founder of the Collegium Curiosum sive Experimentale and reputedly the most skilled experimenter in Germany.
For a brief while in 1700 Doppelmayr attended the University of Halle, but he then decided to give up law for physics and mathematics and spent two years traveling and studying in Germany, Holland, and England.
After Doppelmayr’s return to Nuremberg, he was appointed in 1704 to the professorship of mathematics at the Aegidien Gymnasium, a post he held until his death. His life was devoted to lecturing, writing, astronomical and meteorological observation, and physical experimentation.
Doppelmayr’s writings are not marked by originality; they do, however, provide an index of the scientific interests and information current in Germany, and particularly of the transmission of science from England, Holland, and France into Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Among the astronomical works are Kurze Erklärung der Copernicanischen Systems (1707), Kurze Einleitung zur Astronomie (1708), and translations of Thomas Streete’s astronomy (1705) and of John Wilkins’ defense of the Copernican system (1713). His major work, however, is the Atlas novus coelestis (1742), a collection of diagrams with explanations intended as an introduction to the fundamentals of astronomy. Besides star charts and a selenographic map, the Atlas includes diagrams illustrating the planetary systems of Copernicus, Tycho, and Riccioli; the elliptic theories of Kepler, Boulliau, Seth Ward, and Mercator; the lunar theories of Tycho, Horrocks, and Newton; and Halley’s cometary theory.
Doppelmayr’s writings on mathematics include Summa geometricae practicae; a memoir on spherical trigonometry; an essay on the construction of the sundial; and a translation (with appendices by Doppelmayr) of Nicolas Bion’s treatise on mathematical instruments.
Of lasting value for historians is Doppelmayr’s Historische Nachricht (1730), a 314-page folio volume giving biographical accounts of over 360 mathematicians, artists, and instrument makers of Nuremberg. The biographies are arranged chronologically from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
In physics, Doppelmayr continued the experimental tradition of Sturm. His Physica experimenlis illustrata (1731) is a list, in German, of 700 experiments and demonstrations given before the Collegium Curiosum. The procedures are not described in any detail; they are designed to illustrate such topics as the “subtlety” or fineness of subdivision of various materials, electric and magnetic “effluvia,” simple machines, the principles of hydrostatics, the optics of the eye, and so on.
More important is the Neu-entdeckte Phaenomena (1744), a well-organized and accurate summary of the electrical experiments and theories of Hawksbee, Gray, and Dufay. This work no doubt helped to create and inform the popular interest in electrical phenomena that spread through Germany in the mid-1740s. In the last two chapters Doppelmayr proposes a hypothesis to explain away electrical attraction and repulsion as caused by air movements; Dufay’s discovery of the opposite characters of vitreous and resinous electricity is reduced to a difference in electric strength of different materials; and in general Doppelmayr returns to the earlier and less promising theoretical outlook of Hawksbee.
Doppelmayr’s electrical investigations continued until his death, which followed a severe shock suffered while experimenting with one of the newly invented condensers.
Doppelmayr's reputation was such as to gain him memberships in the Academia Caesarea Leopoldina, the academies of Berlin and St. Petersburg, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of London.
Academia Caesarea Leopoldina
,
Germany
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
,
Russian Federation
Berlin Academy
,
Germany
Russian Academy of Sciences
,
Russian Federation
Personality
Doppelmayr had an exellent reputation and always made a good impression on people.
He developed a close relationship with the Dominican monk and cartographer Johann Batist Homann, the founder of a famous cartographic publishing firm.
Connections
Doppelmayr married Susanna Maria Kellner in 1716. The couple had four children of whom one survived.