Friedrich Bessel
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (; 22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesy, geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the Sun to another star by the method of parallax. Certain important mathematical functions were first studied systematically by Bessel and were named Bessel functions in his honour. Life and family Bessel was born in Minden, Westphalia, then capital of the Prussian administrative region Minden-Ravensberg, as second son of a civil servant into a large family. At the age of 14 he left the school, because he did not like the education in Latin language, and apprenticed in the import-export concern Kulenkamp at Bremen. The business's reliance on cargo ships led him to turn his mathematics, mathematical skills to problems in navigation. This in turn led to an interest in astronomy as a way of determining longitude. Bessel came to the attention of Heinrich Wilhelm Olber ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christian Albrecht Jensen
Christian Albrecht Jensen (26 June 1792 – 13 July 1870) was a Danish portrait painter who was active during the Golden Age of Danish Painting in the first half of the 19th century. Painting more than 400 portraits over the course of his career, he depicted most of the leading figures of the Danish Golden Age, including the writer Hans Christian Andersen, the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted and the theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig. Although Jensen experienced considerable commercial success, he received little official appreciation from the artistic establishment of his day. In particular, the art historian and critic Niels Lauritz Høyen criticized his style, finding his paintings 'unfinished'. Early life and education Jensen was born at Bredstedt in Nordfriesland. From 1810 to 1816, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen where he studied under Christian August Lorentz ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bessel's Correction
In statistics, Bessel's correction is the use of ''n'' − 1 instead of ''n'' in the formula for the sample variance and sample standard deviation, where ''n'' is the number of observations in a sample. This method corrects the bias in the estimation of the population variance. It also partially corrects the bias in the estimation of the population standard deviation. However, the correction often increases the mean squared error in these estimations. This technique is named after Friedrich Bessel. Formulation In estimating the population variance from a sample when the population mean is unknown, the uncorrected sample variance is the ''mean'' of the squares of deviations of sample values from the sample mean (i.e., using a multiplicative factor 1/''n''). In this case, the sample variance is a biased estimator of the population variance. Multiplying the uncorrected sample variance by the factor : \frac n gives an ''unbiased'' estimator of the population varia ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bremen
Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (, ), is the capital of the States of Germany, German state of the Bremen (state), Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (), a two-city-state consisting of the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. With about 577,000 inhabitants, the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic city is the List of cities in Germany by population, 11th-largest city of Germany and the second-largest city in Northern Germany after Hamburg. Bremen is the largest city on the River Weser, the longest river flowing entirely in Germany, lying some upstream from its River mouth, mouth into the North Sea at Bremerhaven, and is completely surrounded by the state of Lower Saxony. Bremen is the centre of the Northwest Metropolitan Region, which also includes the cities of Oldenburg (city), Oldenburg and Bremerhaven, and has a population of around 2.8 million people. Bremen is contiguous with the Lower Saxon towns of Delmenhorst, Stuhr, Achim, Wey ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minden-Ravensberg
Minden-Ravensberg was a Prussian administrative unit consisting of the Principality of Minden and the County of Ravensberg from 1719–1807. The capital was Minden. In 1807 the region became part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, a client state of Napoleonic France. The territory was restored to Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars and became part of the Minden Region within the new Prussian Province of Westphalia in 1815. Geography The province consisted of what is now the Ravensberg Land, between the Teutoburg Forest and the Wiehen Hills, and the Minden Land, north of the Wiehengebirge to the North German lowlands. Minden-Ravensberg was bounded to the east by the Weser, while other important rivers were the Westphalian Aa and the Else. Minden was the regional capital in that time, with other cities such as Bielefeld and Herford being of lower importance. Minden-Ravensberg had a population of 160,301 in 1800 and an area of 2,113 km2 in 1806.Alwin Hanschmidt: ''Das 18. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Westphalia
Westphalia (; ; ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the region is almost identical with the historic Province of Westphalia, which was a part of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1815 to 1918 and the Free State of Prussia from 1918 to 1946. In 1946, Westphalia merged with North Rhine, another former part of Prussia, to form the newly created state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1947, the state with its two historic parts was joined by a third one: Lippe, a former Principality of Lippe, principality and Free State of Lippe, free state. The seventeen Districts of Germany, districts and nine Independent city#Germany, independent cities of Westphalia and Lippe (district), the single district of Lippe are members of the North Rhine-Westphalia#Subdivisions, Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (''Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe''). Previo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different sightline, lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to perspective (graphical), foreshortening, nearby objects show a larger parallax than farther objects, so parallax can be used to determine distances. To measure large distances, such as the distance of a planet or a star from Earth, astronomers use the principle of parallax. Here, the term ''Stellar parallax, parallax'' is the semi-angle of inclination between two sight-lines to the star, as observed when Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit. These distances form the lowest rung of what is called "the cosmic distance ladder", the first in a succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects, serving as a basis for other distance measurements in astronomy forming the higher rungs of the ladder. Because parallax ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of Phenomenon, phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. They work across a wide range of Physics#Research fields, research fields, spanning all length scales: from atom, sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to physical cosmology, cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: Experimental physics, experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments, and Theoretical physics, theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. Physicists can apply their k ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematical model, models, and mathematics#Calculus and analysis, change. History One of the earliest known mathematicians was Thales of Miletus (); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales's theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos () established the Pythagorean school, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman math ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galaxies – in either observational astronomy, observational (by analyzing the data) or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, Sun, solar astronomy, the Star formation, origin or stellar evolution, evolution of stars, or the galaxy formation and evolution, formation of galaxies. A related but distinct subject is physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole. Types Astronomers typically fall under either of two main types: observational astronomy, observational and theoretical astronomy, theoretical. Observational astronomers make direct observations of Astronomical object, celestial objects and analyze the data. In contrast, theoretical astronomers create and investigate Con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gold Medal Of The Royal Astronomical Society
The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awards have been given for "outstanding personal researches in the fields of astronomy and geophysics" as well as general contributions to astronomy and geophysics "that may be made through leadership in research programmes, through education and through scientific administration". It has been awarded both for research that has taken a lifetime (it has most frequently been given to recognise an extraordinary lifetime achievement), and for specific pieces of research. History The RAS was founded in 1820 and the first Gold Medals were awarded in 1824. Silver medals were also awarded in 1824 and 1827, but that practice was quickly abandoned, instead the Royal Astronomical Society#Awards, RAS established other awards. In the early years, more tha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lalande Prize
The Lalande Prize (French: ''Prix Lalande'' also known as Lalande Medal) was an award for scientific advances in astronomy, given from 1802 until 1970 by the French Academy of Sciences. The prize was endowed by astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1801, a few years before his death in 1807, to enable the Academy of Sciences to make an annual award "to the person who makes the most unusual observation or writes the most useful paper to further the progress of Astronomy, in France or elsewhere." The awarded amount grew in time: in 1918 the amount awarded was 1000 Francs, and by 1950, it was 10,000 francs. It was combined with the Valz Prize ''(Prix Valz)'' in 1970 to create the Lalande-Valz Prize and then with a further 122 foundation prizes in 1997, resulting in the establishment of the Grande Médaille. The Grande Medaille is not limited to the field of astronomy. Winners See also * List of astronomy awards * List of Nobel laureates—Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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University Of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 by George II of Great Britain, George II, King of Great Britain and Electorate of Hanover, Elector of Hanover, it began instruction in 1737 and is recognized as the oldest university in Lower Saxony. Recognized for its historic and traditional significance, the university has affiliations with 47 Nobel Prize winners by its own count. Previously backed by the German Universities Excellence Initiative, the University of Göttingen is a member of the U15 (German Universities), U15 Group of major German research universities, underscoring its strong research profile. It is also a part of prominent international and European academic networks such as Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, The Guild, the ENLIGHT alliance, and the Hek ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |