Johann Goldsmid, better known by his Latinized name Johann(es) Fabricius (8 January 1587 – 19 March 1616), eldest son of David Fabricius (1564–1617), was a Frisian/

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astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and a discoverer of sunspots (in 1610), independently of

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He wa ...

.Based on text in main reference.

Biography

Johannes was born in Resterhafe (

East Friesland East Frisia or East Friesland (german: Ostfriesland; ; stq, Aastfräislound) is a historic region in the northwest of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is primarily located on the western half of the East Frisian peninsula, to the east of West Frisia ...

). He studied at the

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Wittenberg University Wittenberg University is a private liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio. It has 1,326 full-time students representing 33 states and 9 foreign countries. Wittenberg University is associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ...

and graduated from Leiden University in 1611. He returned from university in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

with telescopes that he and his father turned on the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. Despite the difficulties of observing the sun directly, they noted the existence of sunspots, the first confirmed instance of their observation (though unclear statements in East Asian annals suggest that

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and Korean astronomers may have discovered them with the naked eye previously, and Fabricius may have noticed them himself without a telescope a few years before). Johannes first observed a sunspot on February 27, 1611; in

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north o ...

in that year he published the results of his observations in his 22-page pamphlet ''De Maculis in Sole observatis....''. It was the first publication on the topic of sunspots. The pair soon used

camera obscura A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. ''Camera obscura'' can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in w ...

telescopy so as to save their eyes and get a better view of the solar disk, and observed that the spots moved. They would appear on the eastern edge of the disk, steadily move to the western edge, disappear, then reappear at the east again after the same amount of time that it had taken for it to cross the disk in the first place.Wilfried Schroeder has published the paper by Fabricius on the discovery of sunspots in 1611 in: Wilfried Schroeder, ''The Discovery of Sunspots'', Bremen 2009. He is also mentioned in Jules Verne's ''From the Earth to the Moon'' as someone who claimed to have seen lunar inhabitants through his telescope, though that particular fact is merely part of Verne's fiction. The large () Fabricius crater, on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

's southern hemisphere, is named after his father, David Fabricius. He died in Marienhafe, at the age of 29.

Legacy

In 1895, a monument was erected to his memory in the churchyard at Osteel, where his father had been

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from 1603 until 1616.

Work

*Joh. Fabricii Phrysii ''De Maculis in Sole observatis, et apparente earum cum Sole conversione, Narratio, etc. Witebergae, Anno M.DC.XI.'' (year 1611).

Notes

References

*Gerhard Berthold: ''Der Magister Johann Fabricius und die Sonnenflecken, nebst einem Excurs über David Fabricius'' (Magister Johann Fabricius and Sunspots, together with a Digression on David Fabricius), Leipzig, 1894. *L. Häpke: "Fabricius und die Entdeckung der Sonnenflecken" ("Fabricius and the Discovery of Sunspots") in: ''Abhandlungen des naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins zu Bremen'', 10, 1888, pp. 249–272. *Bernhard Bunte: "Über Johannes Fabricus, den Entdecker der Sonnenflecken" ("On Johannes Fabricius, the Discoverer of Sunspots") in: ''Jahrbuch der Ges. für bildende Kunst und vaterländ. Altertümer zu Emden'', 9, H. 1, 1890, pp. 59–77. *Diedrich Wattenberg: ''David Fabricius. Der Astronom Ostfrieslands'' (David Fabricius. Astronomer of

), Berlin 1964. *Fritz Krafft: in

Walther Killy Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Göttinge ...

's ''Literaturlexikon: Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache'' (Literature-Lexicon: Authors and Words of German Language), 15 volumes, Gütersloh; München: Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verl. 1988-1991 (CD-ROM Berlin 1998 ), Vol. 3. *Wilfried Schroeder, ''The Discovery of Sunspots,'' Bremen 2009 * *

External links

The Galileo Project
— biography of David and Johannes Fabricius.
Entry in the biographical encyclopedia of East Frisia (German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fabricius, Johannes 1587 births 1616 deaths East Frisians Frisian scientists 17th-century German astronomers Leiden University alumni People from Aurich (district)