Background
Nils Dunér was born on May 21, 1839, in Billeberga, Sweden. He was the son of Nils Dunér and Pella Schlyter. He also had a brother, Gustaf Johan Anton Dunér.
Dunér studied astronomy at the University of Lund and obtained his doctor’s degree in 1862.
Dunér was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dunér was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Dunér was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Dunér studied astronomy at the University of Lund and obtained his doctor’s degree in 1862.
In 1979, the International Astronomical Union named the lunar crater Dunér after him.
Dunér was awarded the Rumford medal in 1892.
Dunér was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dunér was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Dunér was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
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1867
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1876
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1900
Nils Dunér was born on May 21, 1839, in Billeberga, Sweden. He was the son of Nils Dunér and Pella Schlyter. He also had a brother, Gustaf Johan Anton Dunér.
Dunér studied astronomy at the University of Lund and obtained his doctor’s degree in 1862.
In 1861 and 1864 Dunér was a member of expeditions to the Spitsbergen Islands as geographer and physicist, and his experiences were later taken into account by a joint Swedish-Russian geodetic survey of these northern islands about 1900.
From 1864 to 1888 he was senior astronomer at the Lund Observatory. In 1888 he was appointed professor of astronomy at Uppsala University and director of the observatory. He retired in 1909.
His dissertation of 1862 deals with the deter-mination of the orbit of the planetoid Panopea, which had been discovered the previous year. Swedish astronomy at that time was of necessity strictly non-observational, as the observatories were obsolete. During the next few years a new observatory was erected at Lund, and he became an observing astronomer, “the strict empiricist,” who introduced the “new astronomy” to Sweden.
His work covered measurement of visual double stars and discussion of their relative movements; description and measurement of the spectra of red stars, of which he discovered more than 100; spectroscopic determination of the rotation of the sun (a spectroscope with the largest grating of the time had been constructed); and observation and reduction of the star positions of the Lund Zone (declination +35° to +40°) of the meridian circle survey until the declination -23° of the Astronomische Gesellschaft.
Having transferred to Uppsala Observatory, Duner again had to wait for improved equipment, but he succeeded in developing an efficient observatory. He revived his measurements of solar rotation and obtained further evidence for the decrease in the velocity of rotation from the equator to the latitudes ±75° (the results of his Lund measurements had also contributed to the waning discussion of the reliability of the Doppler principle).
He continued his observations of the red stars; about twenty years later Hale and Ellerman pointed out how Dunér’s results, obtained visually and with small and primitive instruments, were confirmed photographically. Also at Uppsala he found the solution to the special problems of the eclipsing binary Y Cygni, pointing out that this system consists of two similar suns moving around their common center of gravity in elliptic orbits, the common line of apsides of which simultaneously rotates in the plane of the orbits. After summing up these results in a few lines Dunér added modestly: “These investigations may well claim some interest.”
In 1887 he went to Paris as a Swedish delegate to the meeting concerning the gigantic Carte photographique du del project, and he was a member of the commission appointed to plan and supervise its effectuation. His foresight is apparent in his suggestion to postpone the project for a quarter of a century, in view of the rapid development of instrumental and photographic facilities that was expected. But his observatory did participate in the photographic campaign of the years 1900-1901 to determine the solar parallax by means of observations of the planetoid Eros.
Nils Christofer Dunér is remembered as a prominent astronomer who is best known for his now-classic study of the Sun’s rotation. Using the Doppler shift, he established that the Sun’s rotational period is about 25 1/2 days near the Equator but up to 38 1/2 days near the Sun’s poles. He is also remembered for his solution to the special problems of the eclipsing binary Y Cygni.
He was awarded the Lalande Prize in 1887 and the Rumford medal in 1892.
Mount Dunérfjellet (in Svenskøya), Dunérbukta Bay (in Sabine Land), and the Kapp Dunér promontory were named in his honor.
In 1979, the International Astronomical Union named the lunar crater Dunér after him.
Dunér was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was also a freemason and member of the Order of Charles XIII.
In characterizing Dunér’s qualities as a scientist, Angstrom, in his obituary, praised his clear mind for inductive reasoning and his great experimental genius.
Dunér was married to Hilda Aurora Trägårdh. They had four children.
