Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf (21 June 1863 – 3 October 1932) was a German

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 pioneer in the field of astrophotography. He was the chairman of astronomy at the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

and director of the

Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory (german: Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl) is a historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill in the city of Heidelberg in Germany. The predecessor of the curr ...

from 1902 until his death in 1932.

Early life

Max Wolf was born in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...

, Germany on 21 June 1863, the son of medical doctor Franz Wolf. His father encouraged an interest in science and built an observatory for his son in the garden of the family home. It is from here that Wolf was credited with his first astronomical discovery, comet 14P/Wolf, in 1884.

Life at the university

Wolf attended his local university and, in 1888, at the age of 25, was awarded a Ph.D. by the

. He spent one year of post-graduate study in Stockholm, the only significant time he would spend outside of Heidelberg in his life. He returned to the

and accepted the position of ''privat-docent'' in 1890. A popular lecturer in astronomy, he declined offers of positions from other institutions. In 1902 he was appointed Chair of Astronomy and Director of the new Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl observatory, positions he would hold until his death in 1932. Astrograph in Heidelberg-Königstuhl-2

While the new observatory was being built Wolf was appointed to supervise the construction and outfitting of the

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

half of the observatory. He proved to be not only a capable supervisor but also a successful fundraiser. When sent to America to study the construction of the large new telescopes being built there he returned not only with telescope plans but also with a grant of $10,000 from the American philanthropist Catherine Wolfe Bruce. Wolf immediately designed and ordered a double refractor telescope from American astronomer and instrument builder John Brashear. This instrument, known as the ''Bruce double- astrograph'', with parallel lenses and a fast f/5 focal ratio, became the observatory's primary research telescope. Wolf also raised money for a reflector telescope, the first for the observatory, used for spectroscopy. In 1910 Wolf proposed to the Carl Zeiss optics firm the creation of a new instrument which would become known as the planetarium.

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

intervened before the invention could be developed, but the Carl Zeiss company resumed this project after peace was restored. The first official public showing was at the

Deutsches Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

Munich, Germany Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

on 21 October 1923. During his trip to America Wolf was interested in learning more about the relatively new field of astrophotography. He met the American astronomer and astrophotographer

E.E. Barnard Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923) was an American astronomer. He was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognized as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the high proper mo ...

, and the two became lifelong correspondents, competitors, collaborators and friends. Wolf wrote a long obituary for Barnard upon his death in 1923.

Later life and death

Heidelberg University became well known for astronomy under Wolf's leadership. Wolf himself was an active researcher, contributing numerous papers in many areas of astronomy up to the end of his life. He died in Heidelberg on 3 October 1932, at the age of 69. He was survived by his widow and three sons.

Comets and novae

Wolf started his career as a comet hunter and continued to discover them throughout his life. He discovered or co-discovered several

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

s, including 14P/Wolf and 43P/Wolf-Harrington. Wolf won a competition with

E. E. Barnard Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923) was an American astronomer. He was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognized as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the high proper mo ...

on who would be the first to observe the return of Halley's Comet (P1/Halley) in April 1910. He discovered Nova Aquilae 1927, a classical nova. He discovered or co-discovered four supernovae: SN 1895A (a.k.a. VW Vir), SN 1909A (a.k.a. SS UMa), SN 1920A, and, with Reinmuth, SN 1926A.

Dark nebulae

One of the many significant contributions Wolf made was in the determination of the nature of ''

dark nebula A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection neb ...

e''. These areas of the sky, thought since William Herschel's time to be "holes in the sky", were a puzzle to astronomers of the time. In collaboration with

E. E. Barnard Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923) was an American astronomer. He was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognized as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the high proper mo ...

, Wolf proved, by careful photographic analysis, that ''dark nebulae'' were huge clouds of fine opaque dust.

Star catalog

Along with E. E. Barnard, Wolf applied astrophotography to the observation of stars. The ''Bruce double-astrograph'' was originally designed to hunt dim asteroids but it was found to be ideally suited for the study of the proper motion of low-luminosity stars using much the same technique. In 1919 Wolf published a catalog of the locations of over one thousand stars along with their measured proper motion. These stars are still commonly identified by his name and catalog number. Among the stars he discovered is '' Wolf 359'', a dim red dwarf that was later found to be one of the nearest stars to our solar system. He continued to add proper motion star discoveries to this catalog throughout his life, with the catalog eventually totaling over 1500 stars, many more than all of his competitors combined. These stars are significant because stars with low luminosity and high proper motion, such as

Barnard's Star Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It is the fourth-nearest-known individual star to the Sun after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system, and the closest star in t ...

and Wolf 359, are usually relatively close to the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

and thus the stars in Wolf's catalog remain popular subjects for astronomical research. The methods used by

E. E. Barnard Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923) was an American astronomer. He was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognized as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the high proper mo ...

and Wolf were continued by

Frank Elmore Ross Frank Elmore Ross (April 2, 1874 – September 21, 1960) was an American astronomer and physicist. He was born in San Francisco, California and died in Altadena, California. In 1901 he received his doctorate from the University of California ...

and

George Van Biesbroeck George A. Van Biesbroeck (or Georges-Achille Van Biesbroeck, , January 21, 1880 – February 23, 1974) was a Belgian–American astronomer. He worked at observatories in Belgium, Germany and the United States. He specialized in the observation o ...

through the mid-20th century. Since that time photographic plates have been gradually replaced with more sensitive electronic photodetectors for

astronomical survey An astronomical survey is a general map or image of a region of the sky (or of the whole sky) that lacks a specific observational target. Alternatively, an astronomical survey may comprise a set of images, spectra, or other observations of obj ...

Asteroids

In 1891, Wolf discovered his first asteroid, 323 Brucia, and named it after Catherine Wolfe Bruce. He pioneered the use of astrophotographic techniques to automate the discovery of asteroids, as opposed to older visual methods, as a result of which asteroid discovery rates sharply increased. In time-exposure photographs, asteroids appear as short streaks due to their planetary motion with respect to fixed stars. Wolf discovered 248 asteroids in his lifetime. Among his many discoveries was

588 Achilles Achilles (minor planet designation: 588 Achilles) is a large Jupiter trojan asteroid of the Greek camp. Achilles was the first Jupiter trojan to be discovered, and was discovered by Max Wolf at the Heidelberg Observatory in 1906. Wolf named the m ...

(the first

Trojan asteroid In astronomy, a trojan is a small celestial body (mostly asteroids) that shares the orbit of a larger body, remaining in a stable orbit approximately 60° ahead of or behind the main body near one of its Lagrangian points and . Trojans can shar ...

) in 1906, as well as two other Trojans: 659 Nestor and 884 Priamus. He also discovered 887 Alinda in 1918, which is now recognized as an Earth-crossing Amor asteroid (or sometimes classified as the namesake of its own

Alinda family The Alinda asteroids are a dynamical group of asteroids with a semi-major axis of about 2.5 AU and an orbital eccentricity approximately between 0.4 and 0.65.Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth on 24 July 1933.

List of discovered minor planets

Source:

Awards and honors

* Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society, in 1912. * Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1914. * Bruce Medal in 1930. The lunar crater

Wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

as well as the main-belt asteroids 827 Wolfiana and 1217 Maximiliana were named in his honor. Minor planet 1152 Pawona is named after both Johann Palisa and Max Wolf, in recognition of their cooperation. The name was proposed by Swedish astronomer Bror Ansgar Asplind. ''Pawona'' is a combination of "Palisa" and "Wolf" (Pa, Wo) joined with a Latin feminine suffix.

Other astronomers named ''Wolf''

Marek Wolf Marek Wolf (born 30 June 1957) is a Czech Republic, Czech astronomer, former head the Astronomický ústav, Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Astronomical Institute, Charles University of Prague). He is a discoverer of several asteroids between 1995 an ...

, a Czech astronomer who is also a

discoverer of minor planets This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 nu ...

. He is credited as "M. Wolf" by the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function T ...

, while the discoveries by Max Wolf are credited with "M. F. Wolf". * Charles Wolf, a French astronomer and co-discoverer of the Wolf-Rayet stars. * German astronomers Christian Wolf and Ulrich Wolff (amateur from Berlin), as well as American astronomer Chris Wolfe have also discovered minor planets.

References

External links

*
The Bruce Medalists

Obituaries

MacPherson, Hector, Observatory 55, 355-59 (1932)

Reynolds, J.H., MNRAS 93, 236-238 (1933)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolf, Max 1863 births 1932 deaths 19th-century German astronomers Discoverers of asteroids Discoverers of comets Discoverers of supernovae Scientists from Heidelberg Heidelberg University alumni Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences * Recipients of the Lalande Prize 20th-century German astronomers