Kasimir Romuald Graff (7 February 1878 – 15 February 1950) was a Polish-German

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 ...

. He worked as an assistant at the

Hamburg 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 became a professor at

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

in 1916. In 1928 he became director of the Vienna Observatory,

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. When the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

government took over in Austria in 1938, he was forced to retire. It is likely that his family background and his rejection of the Nazi-supported philosophy of "

Welteislehre (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as (''Glacial Cosmogony''), is a List of topics characterized as pseudoscience, discredited cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor. Accord ...

" was the reason, although he officially was removed because of unproven charges of

embezzlement Embezzlement (from Anglo-Norman, from Old French ''besillier'' ("to torment, etc."), of unknown origin) is a type of financial crime, usually involving theft of money from a business or employer. It often involves a trusted individual taking ...

. He was reinstated in 1945, and he retired in 1949. Using a 60 cm telescope, he was very adept in creating planetary maps from visual observations. He also worked on measuring radiation emitted from stars, and invented and built new instrumentation for this purpose. This included new types of

calorimeter A calorimeter is a device used for calorimetry, or the process of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity. Differential scanning calorimeters, isothermal micro calorimeters, titration calorimeters ...

and

photometer A photometer is an instrument that measures the strength of electromagnetic radiation in the range from ultraviolet to infrared and including the visible spectrum. Most photometers convert light into an electric current using a photoresistor, ...

detectors.

Honors

* The lunar crater Graff, as well as Martian crater Graff, are named after Graff.

References

1878 births 1950 deaths 20th-century German astronomers Member of the Tomasz Zan Society {{Germany-astronomer-stub