Hermann Von Struve
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Karl Hermann von Struve ( – 12 August 1920) was a
Baltic German Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are Germans, ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), their resettlement in 1945 after the end ...
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, galax ...
. In
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 ...
, his name is sometimes given as ''German Ottovich Struve'' (Герман Оттович Струве) or ''German Ottonovich Struve'' (Герман Оттонович Струве). Hermann von Struve was a part of the famous group of astronomers 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 ...
, which also included his grandfather
Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (, trans. ''Vasily Yakovlevich Struve''; 15 April 1793 – ) was a Baltic German astronomer and geodesist. He is best known for studying double stars and initiating a triangulation survey later named Struve ...
, father
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). ...
, brother Ludwig Struve and nephew
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 ...
. Unlike other astronomers of the Struve family, Herman spent most of his career in
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. Continuing the family tradition, Struve's research was focused on determining the positions of stellar objects. He was particularly known for his work on satellites of planets of the
Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...
and development of the intersatellite method of correcting their orbital position. The mathematical
Struve function In mathematics, the Struve functions , are solutions of the non-homogeneous Bessel's differential equation: : x^2 \frac + x \frac + \left (x^2 - \alpha^2 \right )y = \frac introduced by . The complex number α is the order of the Struve functio ...
is named after him.


Biography

Herman was born in 1854 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. He attended gymnasium in
Vyborg Vyborg (; , ; , ; , ) is a town and the administrative center of Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of Vyborg Bay, northwest of St. Petersburg, east of the Finnish capital H ...
and in 1872 entered the
Imperial University of Dorpat The University of Tartu (UT; ; ) is a public research university located in the city of Tartu, Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is also the largest and oldest university in the country.
(now known as Tartu). While studying there, in 1874–1875, Struve participated in an expedition to observe transit of Venus through the disk of the Sun. That observation was carried out at Port Poisset on the Asiatic East Coast. After graduation in 1877, he became a member of the
Pulkovo Observatory The Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory (), officially named the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo, is the principal astronomical observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is located 19 km south ...
and was sent abroad for two-year post-graduate studies. Accompanied by his cousin's husband, Struve stayed in several cities, including
Straßburg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin department and the official seat of the European Parliament. The cit ...
(),
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
,
Graz Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...
and
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, learning from such celebrities as
Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (; ; 31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894; "von" since 1883) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The ...
, Kirchhoff,
Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann ( ; ; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian mathematician and theoretical physicist. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical explanation of the seco ...
and
Weierstrass Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (; ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the " father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematics and trained as a school t ...
. After returning to Russia, he joined the staff of Pulkovo Observatory, studying the
satellites A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scientif ...
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 ...
among other things. In 1881, Struve obtained his master's degree at the Imperial University of Dorpat, with the highest honors, and in 1882 defended a PhD thesis at
Saint Petersburg University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...
(Pulkovo had no associated educational institutions). Both works were in the field of optics, in particular, the master thesis was titled "On Fresnel interference phenomenon – theoretical and experimental work"—according to Struve himself, despite the family traditions, he did not intend then to become an astronomer. Later, however, he became excited with his father's project of building a 30-inch telescope at Pulkovo, with its fantastic new possibilities for observation. Struve made extensive use of this telescope in his work. In 1883, he was appointed adjunct astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory. (Contains a photo of Wilfried.) By then, the Struve family was highly respected in Russia and Tsar Alexander III had a strong wish for Hermann to succeed his father Otto as the director of the Pulkovo Observatory. However, Hermann politely declined the offer, mentioning that he was in the middle of crucial observations of Saturn which would be interrupted by administrative tasks. In 1890, Struve was appointed as the senior astronomer at Pulkovo with the understanding that he should become director after completing his Saturn work. However, the death of Alexander III in 1894 freed Struve from this task. Pro-Russian views were gradually developing in Russian society, including science, and foreigners felt progressively more alienated. Therefore, when in 1895 Struve was offered the position of professor at Königsberg University, he gladly accepted and moved his family to Germany. There, he succeeded
Wilhelm Julius Foerster Wilhelm Julius Foerster (16 December 1832 – 18 January 1921) was a German astronomer. His name can also be written Förster, but is usually written "Foerster" even in most German sources where 'ö' is otherwise used in the text. Biography A ...
as director of
Königsberg Observatory Koenigsberg Observatory (; obs. code: 058) was an astronomical observatory and research facility which was attached to the Albertina University in Königsberg, what is now Kaliningrad, Russia. The observatory was destroyed by Royal Air Force bo ...
. Struve was also called for the task of rescuing the Berlin Observatory. It was then located in the center of Berlin where astronomy observations were not practical and rents were too high, and discussions of its relocation stalled. Struve managed to sell the old observatory site so profitably that he could build a new observatory from scratch. The location was chosen at Neubabelsberg, near
Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and largest city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the Havel, River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...
and from the center of Berlin, and the new institution was named Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory. There, he started installing a 26-inch Zeiss
refractor A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope design was originally used in spyglasses and ...
and a 48-inch reflector, which would then become the largest telescope in Germany. While he did not get to operate them himself due to delays caused by World War I, the refractor was much used by his son Georg, and the reflector by his lesser-known grandson
Wilfried Wilfried is a masculine German given name derived from Germanic roots meaning "will" and "peace" (''Wille'' and ''Frieden'' in German). The English spelling is Wilfrid. Wilfred and Wifred (also Wifredo) are closely related to Wilfried with the sa ...
. In 1905, Struve became professor of 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 from 1904 until his death in 1920, he served as director of the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory. Struve's death was accelerated by a heart illness which he suffered from during his late years and by a bad fall from a tram car in 1919. He broke a thigh, and while recovering in a
sanatorium A sanatorium (from Latin '' sānāre'' 'to heal'), also sanitarium or sanitorium, is a historic name for a specialised hospital for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments, and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often in a health ...
in
Bad Herrenalb Bad Herrenalb is a municipality in the district of Calw, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated in the northern Black Forest, 15 km east of Baden-Baden, and 22 km southwest of Pforzheim. The town is connected to the city of K ...
, died of a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
.


Family matters

Whereas many colleagues described Struve as a stern and serious person, within his family, he was seen as a cultivated man, who enjoyed music and friends and was very proud of the Struve family traditions. Yet even among relatives, he was known as inflexible in matters of principle. In 1885, Struve married the daughter of a cousin of his father. They had a son, Georg Otto Hermann, and a daughter, Elisabeth. George was born on 29 December 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 ...
, Russia, and later became a famous astronomer. Hermann's wife Eva Struve played an important role in rescuing his nephew
Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants '' Audo'', '' Odo'', '' Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fr ...
. After escaping from Soviet Russia in 1920, for a year and a half he was stranded penniless in Turkey. Otto wrote to his uncle for help, unaware of his death, but Eva asked assistance of Paul Guthnick, her late husband's successor at the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory. Whereas Guthnick was not in a position to offer a job to Struve in Germany, he highly recommended Struve to the director of
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 ...
in
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, who not only found a job for Struve at Yerkes, but also arranged a visa for him and paid for his travel.


Research

As with all astronomers of the Struve family, Herman was mostly working on establishing positions and movements of single and
double star In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a ...
s and satellites of the planets of the Solar System. In 1885, a 30-inch
refracting telescope A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens (optics), lens as its objective (optics), objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptrics, dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope d ...
was installed at Pulkovo, at the time the largest in the world (a
great refractor Great refractor refers to a large telescope with a lens, usually the largest refractor at an observatory with an equatorial mount. The preeminence and success of this style in observational astronomy defines an era in modern telescopy in the 19t ...
). Struve was the first user of that telescope, which he used mostly for determining positions of a large number of
double star In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a ...
s. His other major topic was
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 ...
, but he also studied
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...
,
Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...
and the fifth moon of
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...
. He could not observe
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 ( ...
from Pulkovo because it was too far south. In 1888, Struve discovered
libration In lunar astronomy, libration is the cyclic variation in the apparent position of the Moon that is perceived by observers on the Earth and caused by changes between the orbital and rotational planes of the moon. It causes an observer to see ...
of Hyperion (the seventh
moon 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 ...
) and explained it by the perturbing action of the largest Saturn's moon,
Titan Titan most often refers to: * Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn * Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology Titan or Titans may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities Fictional locations * Titan in fiction, fictiona ...
. The same year, he introduced an intersatelite method of correcting orbital position of satellites. The method was rather successful because systematic errors in visual observations of some planets, such as Mars, were unacceptably large. Struve, however, realized that the method had flaws and recommended combining planet/satellite and intersatellite measurements. In 1892, Struve discovered libration of two other moons of Saturn,
Mimas Mimas, also designated Saturn I, is the seventh-largest natural satellite of Saturn. With a mean diameter of , Mimas is the smallest astronomical body known to be roughly rounded in shape due to its own gravity. Mimas's low density, 1.15  ...
and
Enceladus Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and the 18th-largest in the Solar System. It is about in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It is covered by clean, freshly deposited snow hundreds of meters thick, ...
.V. K. Abalkin ''et al.'
Struve dynasty
(in Russian), St. Petersburg University
His observations of the moon of Mars, Phobos, were later used by B. Sharpless in studying the secular acceleration of its orbit. Struve was known not only as an astronomer, but also as a mathematician. In 1882, he introduced a function to describe the intensity of a luminous line. This function also describes solutions of
Bessel's differential equation Bessel functions, named after Friedrich Bessel who was the first to systematically study them in 1824, are canonical solutions of Bessel's differential equation x^2 \frac + x \frac + \left(x^2 - \alpha^2 \right)y = 0 for an arbitrary complex ...
; it therefore is widely used in mathematics and is named the
Struve function In mathematics, the Struve functions , are solutions of the non-homogeneous Bessel's differential equation: : x^2 \frac + x \frac + \left (x^2 - \alpha^2 \right )y = \frac introduced by . The complex number α is the order of the Struve functio ...
. After moving to Königsberg Observatory, Struve built a 32.5-inch refractor telescope there and continued his work on the moons of Saturn, the last observations of which he made in 1916. His other topics included a study of
atmospheric refraction Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of height. This refraction is due to the velocity of light ...
, stellar
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 ...
es, drawings of Jupiter, determination of the position of Mars' equator, the amount of its oblateness and the rate of motion of the nodes.


Awards and honors

In 1897, Struve received the Damoiseau Prize from the
French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...
and in 1903 the
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 awar ...
, both for his work on satellites of Saturn. He was the third (after Friedrich Georg Wilhelm and Otto Wilhelm) member of Struve family to receive that medal. The
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 ...
768 Struveana was named in honor of Herman, Otto Wilhelm and Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Struve, Hermann 1854 births 1920 deaths 20th-century German astronomers Baltic-German people from the Russian Empire 19th-century German astronomers Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Scientists from Saint Petersburg Hermann University of Tartu alumni Academic staff of the University of Königsberg Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society