Struve Vasily Yakovlevich: biography and photos

Struve Vasily Yakovlevich - the founder of a whole dynasty of scientists who did not think their life without astronomy. His son, grandchildren, great-grandson devoted themselves to serving the stellar science. German and Russian scientist, the founder of astronomy, a member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the first head of the Pulkovo Observatory, the founder of the Russian Geographical Society - who was not only Vasily Yakovlevich Struve.

short biography

The founder of the famous dynasty was born in 1793 in Alton - a small German town. His father was the director of the local gymnasium. Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose photo is in every textbook of astronomy, first received a completely different education. His first specialty was philology. The future scientist was trained at the University of Dorpat, which today is called the Tartu University. However, Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, founder of the dynasty of astronomers, found his vocation precisely in natural science.

Studying under the father of philology, the young man already at the age of fifteen was fully prepared for admission to a higher educational institution. At this time, his older brother had already taught at the Dorpat Gymnasium. That is why, and also because of the desire to avoid Napoleon's conscription, which began in connection with military events, Struve chose this university.

The future astronomer was very diligent in philology. Moreover, he wrote a very voluminous scientific work. However, soon Struve Vasily Yakovlevich was very much carried away by Dr. Parrot's lectures on the subject of "physics". And later on the advice of the latter he went into the study of astronomy. Professor Guth, a university professor, helped him in every way in his first steps in stellar science. Already in 1813 Struve defended his thesis.

First steps

Almost at the same time, he began to teach and at the same time was appointed astronomer-observer at the same university. Despite the extreme poverty and scarcity of the inventory, Struve still managed to work actively. He even managed to carry out a very important task at that time: without having the appropriate instruments to observe the declivities of the luminaries, he attempted to do this with a passage tool to calculate the direct ascents of some circumpolar stars.

Personal life

Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography has since been inseparable from astronomy, married in 1815. His chosen one was a resident of Altona Emilia Vall. With it, he lived until 1834. Twelve children were born in this marriage, however, four of them died in childhood.

Since 1828, Struve took custody of his nephew Theodore, the guardian of which was initially his brother Ludwig - professor of anatomy at the University of Dorpat.

After the death of Emilia, in 1834 he married Johannes Bartels, who was the daughter of a mathematician Bartels. With her, Struve had six children, of whom only four survived his father.

In the Dorpat Observatory

In 1819 Struve was appointed its director. At the same time he became an ordinary professor at the university. For twenty years of work as director of the Dorpat Observatory, Vasily Yakovlevich Struve equipped her with first-class and very rare instruments and instruments for that time. When at the end of 1824 he managed to acquire a fourteen-foot refractor of Fraunhofer and Ushneider, who had a nine-inch lens, the best and largest at that time, the astronomer gave himself up to work with inexpressible enthusiasm. For him, a period of boisterous and fruitful scientific activity began, which lasted more than thirteen years. If earlier Struve Vasily Yakovlevich - an astronomer from God - was content only with finding and measuring the double star systems already known from the time of Herschel, then with the acquisition of excellent observational means from the study of the luminaries already discovered by others, he managed to pass to an independent analysis. He watched all the stars until the ninth magnitude between the North Pole and the twentieth degree of the southern declination. Moreover, in the process of studying Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography began as a scientist from the Derpt Observatory, he was able to discover about three thousand new objects, most of them determined the situation, studied the trajectory of motion and special properties.

The discovery of the Pulkovo Observatory

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the expansion of St. Petersburg as a populated place led to the need to create an astronomical observatory located outside the city. The search for a suitable place in the vicinity of the Northern capital began. It was not easy. The observatory required an elevated position, but the Gulf of Finland stretched to the west of the city, and lowlands stretched to the south and east, at a distance of up to twenty kilometers. To build in the north from St. Petersburg did not make sense, because in this case the entire southern part of the sky - the most important zone for observations - was dusted located near a huge inhabited locality.

In 1830, Emperor Nicholas I received a report, which Struve Vasily Yakovlevich wrote. In it, he described in detail the tasks that were put before a new and quite large astronomical observatory, which was supposed to be built near St. Petersburg. Soon it was decided to begin construction in twenty kilometers to the south of the city - on the Pulkovo heights. Architectural work was decided to entrust the famous Russian architect Bryullov. The director and head of organizational work for the creation of a new observatory was Struve, who at that time still worked at the University of Dorpat. Beginning in 1833, he became the most active participant in the process. Pulkovo Observatory was opened in August 1839. And Struve Vasily Yakovlevich became its first director.

From the first day the astronomer proved himself to be an excellent organizer. Since the foundation of the observatory, which took place on June 3, 1835, before the discovery of it in 1839, Struve himself supervised almost all construction work.

Here was installed the best and largest at that time fifteen-inch telescope-refractor. The wealth and quality of installed equipment Pulkovo Observatory literally immediately after its discovery was in the first place in the world. And according to the subsequent recognition of the famous American scientist Newcombe, she became an astronomical world capital.

Work at the Pulkovo Observatory

In the first years of its existence, work on the study of double stars, which Vasily Yakovlevich started in St George's Yuriev, continued. The discoveries that occurred during his work at the Pulkovo Observatory became one of the most important research projects in the field of astronomy. Determine the distance to the stars - this question interested and excited many famous scientists of the time. Struve, hoping to prove the theory of parallactic displacement, discovered by Copernicus, began to carefully measure the position of Vega. He worked on the trajectory of this bright star until 1840. And although the distance to Vega subsequently determined by scientists was corrected on the basis of already more accurate measurements, nevertheless this work Struve became one of the first in the history of astronomy to successfully determine the distance to a specific star. It was on its basis that not a single monumental work was later created. She proved that the stars are extremely distant suns, light rays from which, spreading at a speed of 300 thousand km / s, reach the Earth for tens and even hundreds of years.

Sunset

V. Ya. Struve's fruitful activity lasted until 1858. And when a serious illness, squeezing it, put it out of action, the guidance of the observatory was taken over by his son - the talented scientist Otto Struve. Vasily Yakovlevich - the founder of the dynasty of astronomers - died in 1864. It is interesting, but it was in the same year that the Pulkovo Observatory celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary.

Discoveries

In the field of astronomy V. Ya. Struve proved the real condensation of stars to the central parts in the Galaxy. He also substantiated the conclusion that there is a magnitude of interstellar absorption of light. Of invaluable importance for stellar astronomy is his work entitled "Etudes of stellar astronomy." It was in him that Struve justified his assumption that there is a fact of light absorption in interstellar spaces and an increase in the number of stars per unit volume as they approach the Milky Way.

A scientist studying double stars managed to compile as many as two catalogs of such milky objects and published them, respectively, in 1827 and 1852. Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, whose works are rightly considered to be fundamental in this branch of astronomy, was the first in the world to measure distances to Vega in the constellation of Lyra. This star is the third brightest in the night sky after Sirius and Arcturus, which can be observed in Russia and in the near abroad. And in the constellation Ophiuchus Struve discovered a planetary nebula. Under the guidance of Vasily Yakovlevich and geodesist K. Tanner, a degree measurement of meridian arcs from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the mouth of the Danube River was carried out. Very valuable materials were obtained for a more accurate determination of the shape and dimensions of the Earth.

Followers

Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, whose dynasty consists not only of astronomers, but also of state and political figures, is the founder of an entire branch of stellar science. His case was continued by his son Otto, two grandsons - Hermann and Ludwig, and also a great-grandson - an astrophysicist. In the Struve family there is also a well-known chemist, diplomat, orientalist and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.

Memory

The name of the famous scientist did not remain forgotten. In 1913, a small planet at number 768, discovered by Russian astronomer Neuimin, was named Struveana in honor of astronomers from the family dynasty Struve.

In memory of the great scientist in 1954 was issued and a postage stamp. It was dedicated to the Pulkovo Observatory. It depicts a portrait of V. Ya. Struve and two other famous Russian astronomers. By the centenary of the death of Vasily Yakovlevich, in 1964, one more brand of the USSR was issued . His portrait is also present on analogues dedicated to the arc, named after the great astronomer. These brands were issued by Lithuania (2009), Latvia, Estonia and Sweden (2011). In addition, in 1964, the International Astronomical Union crater, located on the visible part of the moon, was given the name of V. Ya. Struve.

Catalogs

Struve, rightly considered the founder of an entire branch of astronomy, in 1827, as a result of viewing more than one hundred and twenty thousand celestial objects, published a catalog that included more than three thousand double and multiple stars. Most of them - 2343 luminaries - were discovered by the scientist himself. In 1837, his most famous work was published. In "Micrometric measurements of binary stars", results were given over eleven thousand calculations made by Vasily Struve for twelve years with the help of the Dorpat refractor. Both catalogs, published by the scientist, were awarded medals of the Royal Astronomical Society of London.

In 1852, a work was published under the title "Midpoints", where the results of long-term observations of almost three thousand stars were cited. The work that was performed by Struve and his assistants at the Dorpat Observatory for almost twenty years was subsequently used more than once in stellar astronomy.

Achievements

Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose brief biography testifies to his enormous role in astronomy, also made a great contribution to the development of such a science as geodesy. From 1822 to 1827, under his leadership, a meridian arc was measured from the island of Hogland, located in the Gulf of Finland, to the city of Jakobstadt. In 1828, it was coupled with an analogue, calculated in the south-west of our country. Then these measurements continued from north to south. As a result, the length of the entire measured arc was brought to 25 ° 20 '. It was called Russian-Scandinavian. However, experts know it more like the Struve arc.

Ranks

Vasily Yakovlevich was an honorary member of almost all universities in our country, as well as many foreign scientific societies and academies of sciences. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Struve participated in the process of creating the Lisbon Observatory. It currently belongs to the city university, but observations are no longer conducted there. An observatory was created in the image and likeness of the Russian - Pulkovo, which was considered at that time an astronomical world capital. The main consultant in the choice of instruments was the famous Russian astronomer Struve.