Georg Otto Hermann Struve (; 29 December 1886 – 10 June 1933) was a German astronomer from the

Struve family The Struve family (pronounced in German, in Russian) were a Baltic nobility, Baltic German noble family of Eastphalian origin and originated in Magdeburg, the family produced five generations of astronomers from the 18th to 20th centuries. Membe ...

and the son of

Hermann Struve Karl Hermann von Struve ( – 12 August 1920) was a Baltic German astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as ''German Ottovich Struve'' (Герман Оттович Струве) or ''German Ottonovich Struve'' (Герман Отто� ...

. Georg was born in 1886 in

Tsarskoye Selo Tsarskoye Selo (, , ) was the town containing a former residence of the Russian House of Romanov, imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of Saint Petersburg. The residence now forms part of the Pushkin, Saint Peter ...

– a former

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

residence of the

imperial family A royal family is the immediate family of monarch, monarchs and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or emperor, empress, and the term papal family describes the family of ...

and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. In 1895, his family moved to

Königsberg Königsberg (; ; ; ; ; ; , ) is the historic Germany, German and Prussian name of the city now called Kaliningrad, Russia. The city was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussians, Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teuton ...

. After graduating from a gymnasium there, between 1905 and 1910 Struve studied at the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

and

University of Heidelberg Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is List ...

. After defending his PhD thesis in 1910, he worked till 1914 at the observatories at Bohn Observatory and

Hamburg-Bergedorf Observatory Hamburg Observatory () is an astronomical observatory located in the Bergedorf borough of the city of Hamburg in northern Germany. It is owned and operated by the University of Hamburg, Germany since 1968, although it was founded in 1825 by the ...

, and between 1914 and 1919 at the Naval Observatory of Wilhelmshaven. In 1919, he moved to the

Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory The Berlin Observatory (Berliner Sternwarte) is a German astronomical institution with a series of observatories and related organizations in and around the city of Berlin in Germany, starting from the 18th century. It has its origins in 1700 w ...

established by his father

. There, he studied

celestial mechanics Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of objects in outer space. Historically, celestial mechanics applies principles of physics (classical mechanics) to astronomical objects, such as stars and planets, to ...

and continued the work of his father, analyzing movement of satellites of

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

and

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

. For observation of

Moons of Saturn The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to the enormous Titan (moon), Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury (planet), Mercury. There are 274 natural satellite, moons with con ...

, in 1925 he visited

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

where he met his cousin

Otto Struve Otto Lyudvigovich Struve (; 12 August 1897 – 6 April 1963) was a Russian-American astronomer of Baltic German origin. Otto was the descendant of famous astronomers of the Struve family; he was the son of Ludwig Struve, grandson of Otto Wilhel ...

. For the same purpose, in 1926 he went to

Union Observatory Union Observatory, also known as Transvaal Observatory, Republic Observatory and Johannesburg Observatory ( 078), is a defunct astronomical observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa that operated from 1903 to 1971. It is located on Observatory R ...

in South Africa where he was very pleased with the quality of the obtained images.V. K. Abalkin ''et al.'
Struve dynasty
(in Russian), St. Petersburg University Around 1930, he participated in the Eros campaign, where observations of an

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

433 Eros 433 Eros is a stony asteroid of the Amor group, and the first discovered, and second-largest near-Earth object. It has an elongated shape and a volume-equivalent diameter of approximately . Visited by the NEAR Shoemaker space probe in 1998, ...

was used to determine the value of solar

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 (graphica ...

. Struve also used US observatories. At

Yerkes Observatory Yerkes Observatory ( ) is an astronomical observatory located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, United States. The observatory was operated by the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from its founding in 1897 until 2018. O ...

, he again met his cousin Otto and reanalyzed observations of the complex multiple star system zeta Cancri by their grandfather

Otto Wilhelm von Struve Otto Wilhelm von Struve (May 7, 1819 (Julian calendar: April 25) – April 14, 1905) was a Russian astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is normally given as Otto Vasil'evich Struve (Отто Васильевич Струве). ...

. Georg Struve was married to Marie von Mokk, daughter of a Prussian general. They had two sons, Wilfried (born in

Wilhelmshaven Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsha ...

, Germany, 1914 – died in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

, Germany, 1992) and Reinhardt. Whereas Wilfried became a scientist working in astronomy and acoustics, Reinhardt died during the World War II in 1943. On May 28, 1933, Georg Struve was taken to the hospital with an acute pneumonia and died on June 10.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Struve, Georg Hermann Russian astronomers 20th-century German astronomers Georg Hermann 1886 births 1933 deaths