Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes (German: [ˈbʀandəs]; 27 July 1777 – 17 May 1834) was a German physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer.
Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes | |
|---|---|
| Born | 27 July 1777 Groden near Ritzebüttel |
| Died | 17 May 1834 (aged 56) |
| Occupation(s) | German meteorologist and physicist |
Brandes was born in 1777 in Groden near Ritzebüttel (a former exclave of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg, today in Cuxhaven), the third son of Albert Georg Brandes, a preacher. He studied at the University of Göttingen (then in the Electorate of Hanover) from 1796 to 1798 under Abraham Gotthelf Kästner and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Carl Friedrich Gauss was a fellow student. He attained his doctorate in 1800, and spent a short time teaching privately. As an astronomer, he was noted for demonstrating that meteors occur in the upper atmosphere and thus not really a meteorological phenomenon.[1]
From 1801 to 1811 he was at first a technical designer of dykes on the Weser river at Eckwarden, Butjadingen, in the Duchy of Oldenburg, and later a dyke inspector for the lower right bank of the Weser.
In 1811 he became a professor of mathematics at the newly created University of Breslau, a merger of two Wrocław colleges. In 1826 he gained the chair of physics at the University of Leipzig.
He had a very wide range of activities. He wrote a considerable number of mathematics textbooks. In 1820 he published the first weather charts in Beiträgen zur Witterungskunde ("Contributions to Meteorology"). Thus he is considered to be a founder of synoptic meteorology. In 1824 he developed a new method to compute the Euler constant numerically. He died on 17 May 1834 in Leipzig and was buried in the Alter Johannisfriedhof.
Publications
edit- Versuche, die Entfernung, die Geschwindigkeit und die Bahnen der Sternschnuppen zu bestimmen ("Attempts to determine the distance, speed and course of meteors") (with Johann Friedrich Benzenberg; 1800)
- Die vornehmsten Lehren der Astronomie in Briefen an eine Freundin dargestellt ("Major theories of astronomy, described in letters to a friend") (4 vols, 1811–16)
- Untersuchungen über den mittleren Gang der Wärmeänderungen durchs ganze Jahr; über gleichzeitige Witterungs – Ereignisse in weit voneinander entfernten Weltgegenden; über die Formen der Wolken, die Entstehung des Regens und der Stürme; und über andere Gegenstände der Witterungskunde ("Meteorology") (Leipzig: Barth, 1820)
References
edit- ^ Hockey, Thomas (2009). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved August 22, 2012.