Struve Vasily Yakovlevich - the founder of a whole dynasty of scientists who could not imagine their life without astronomy. His son, grandchildren, great-grandson devoted themselves to the service of stellar science. A German and Russian scientist, founder of astronomy, a member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the first head of the Pulkovo Observatory, the founder of the Russian Geographical Society - who Vasily Yakovlevich Struve was not.
short biography
The founder of the famous dynasty was born in 1793 in Alton, a small German town. His father was the director of a local gymnasium. Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose photo is in every textbook of astronomy, at first received a completely different education. His first specialty was philology. The future scientist was trained at the University of Dorpat, which today is called Tartu. However, Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, the founder of the dynasty of astronomers, found his vocation in natural science.
Being engaged in philology under the supervision of his father, the young man was already fully prepared for admission to a higher educational institution at the age of fifteen. At this time, his older brother was already teaching at the Dorpat gymnasium. That is why, and also out of a desire to avoid the draft of Napoleon, which began in connection with military events, Struve chose this university.
The future astronomer was very diligent in philology. Moreover, he wrote a very voluminous scientific work. However, soon Struve Vasily Yakovlevich was very interested in the lectures of Dr. Parrot on the subject of “Physics”. And later, on the advice of the latter, he delved into the study of astronomy. Professor Gut, a university professor, helped him in every way in his first steps in stellar science. Already in 1813 Struve defended his thesis.
First steps
Almost at the same time, he began to teach and was simultaneously appointed observer astronomer at the same university. Despite the extreme poverty and scarcity of equipment, Struve still managed to work actively. He even managed to perform a very important task for those times: without the proper instruments for observing the declination of the stars, he attempted to do this with the help of a pass tool to calculate the direct ascents of some near-polar stars.
Personal life
Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography has since been inseparable from astronomy, married in 1815. His chosen one was a resident of Altona Emilia Vall. He lived with her until 1834. Twelve children were born in this marriage, however, four of them died in childhood.
Since 1828, Struve took custody of the nephew Theodore, whose guardian was originally his brother Ludwig, a professor of anatomy at the University of Derpt.
After the death of Emilia, in 1834 he married Johannes Bartels, who was the daughter of the mathematician Bartels. With her, Struve had six more children, of whom only four survived their father.
At the Derpt Observatory
In 1819, Struve was appointed its director. At the same time, he became an ordinary university professor. Over the twenty years of his work as director of the Derpt Observatory, Vasily Yakovlevich Struve equipped it with first-class and very rare instruments and tools for that time. When at the end of 1824 he managed to acquire a fourteen-foot refractor Fraunhofer and Uschneider, with a nine-inch lens, the best and largest at that time, the astronomer devoted himself to work with indescribable enthusiasm.
For him, a period of intense and fruitful scientific activity began, which lasted more than thirteen years. Whereas earlier, Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, an astronomer from God, was content only to find and measure binary star systems already known from Herschel’s time, but with the acquisition of excellent observational tools from the study of luminaries already discovered by other luminaries, he managed to switch to independent analysis. He watched all the stars up to the ninth magnitude between the North Pole and the twentieth degree of the south declination. Moreover, in the process of studying, Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography as an accomplished scientist began precisely with the Derpt Observatory, along the way was able to discover about three thousand new objects, most of them determined the position, studied the trajectory of movement and special properties.
Opening of the Pulkovo Observatory
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the expansion of St. Petersburg as a settlement led to the need to create an astronomical observatory located outside the city. The search began for a suitable place in the vicinity of the Northern capital. It was not easy. The observatory required an elevated place, but the Gulf of Finland stretched to the west of the city, and in the south and east, at a distance of up to twenty kilometers, lowlands extended. To build in the north of St. Petersburg did not make sense, since in this case the entire southern part of the sky - the most important area for observation - was dusted by a huge settlement located nearby.
In 1830, Emperor Nicholas I received a report written by Struve Vasily Yakovlevich. In it, he described in detail the tasks that were posed to the new and sufficiently large astronomical observatory, which was supposed to be built near St. Petersburg. Soon, it was decided to begin construction twenty kilometers south of the city - at the Pulkovo Heights. The architectural work was decided to entrust the famous Russian architect Bryullov. Struve, who at that time was still working at the University of Derpt, was appointed director and manager of organizational work to create a new observatory. Since 1833, he became the most active participant in the process. The Pulkovo Observatory opened in August 1839. And Struve Vasily Yakovlevich became its first director.
From the first day, the astronomer proved himself to be an excellent organizer. From the moment of laying the first stone in the observatory building, which took place on June 3, 1835, until its opening in 1839, Struve himself supervised almost all construction work.
Here was installed the best and largest at that time fifteen-inch telescope-refractor. By the wealth and quality of the installed equipment, the Pulkovo Observatory literally immediately after its discovery was in first place in the world. And according to the subsequent recognition of the famous American scientist Newcomb, it became the astronomical world capital.
Work at the Pulkovo Observatory
In the very first years of its existence, work continued on the study of binary stars, which Vasily Yakovlevich began back in Yuryev Struve. The discoveries that occurred during his work at the Pulkovo Observatory became one of the most important in a number of studies in the field of astronomy. Determine the distance to the stars - this question was of interest and concern to many eminent scientists of that time. Struve, hoping to prove the theory of parallactic displacement, discovered by Copernicus, began to carefully measure the position of Vega. He worked on the trajectory of this bright star until 1840. And although the distance he determined to Vega was subsequently corrected by scientists on the basis of more accurate measurements, nevertheless, this work by Struve was one of the first successful works in astronomy history to determine the distance to a specific star. It was on its basis that subsequently not one monumental work was created. She proved that the stars are extremely distant suns, light rays from which, propagating at a speed of 300 thousand km / s, reach the Earth for tens and even hundreds of years.
Sunset
The fruitful activity of V. Ya. Struve continued until 1858. And when a serious illness, mowing it, incapacitated, his son, a talented scientist Otto Struve, took charge of the observatory. Vasily Yakovlevich - the founder of the dynasty of astronomers - died in 1864. Interestingly, it was in the same year that the Pulkovo Observatory celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary.
Discoveries
In the field of astronomy, V. Ya. Struve proved a real condensation of stars to the central parts in the Galaxy. He substantiated the conclusion that there is a magnitude of interstellar light absorption. Invaluable to stellar astronomy is his work entitled "Etudes of Stellar Astronomy." It was in him that Struve substantiated his assumption that there is a fact of light absorption in interstellar spaces and an increase in the number of stars per unit volume as they approach the Milky Way.
A scientist studying binary stars managed to compile two catalogs of such milky objects and published them, respectively, in 1827 and 1852. Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, whose works are considered to be fundamental in this branch of astronomy, for the first time in the world was able to measure the distance to Vega in the constellation Lyra. This star is the third brightest in the night sky after Sirius and Arcturus, which can be observed in Russia and the near abroad. And in the constellation Ophiuchus Struve discovered a planetary nebula. Under the guidance of Vasily Yakovlevich and surveyor K. Tenner, the meridian arcs from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the mouth of the Danube River were measured in degrees. Very valuable materials were obtained to more accurately determine the shape and size of the Earth.
Followers
Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, whose dynasty consists not only of astronomers, but also of government and political figures, is the founder of a whole branch of stellar science. His work was continued by his son Otto, two grandchildren - German and Ludwig, as well as a great-grandson - an astrophysicist. In the family of Struve there is also a well-known chemist, diplomat, orientalist and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Memory
The name of the famous scientist did not remain forgotten. In 1913, the small planet, number 768, discovered by the Russian astronomer Neuimin, was named Struveana in honor of astronomers from the family Struve dynasty.
In 1954, a postage stamp was issued in memory of the great scientist. She was dedicated to the Pulkovo Observatory. It depicts a portrait of V. Ya. Struve and two other well-known Russian astronomers. By the centenary of the death of Vasily Yakovlevich, in 1964, another USSR stamp was issued . His portrait is also present on analogues dedicated to the arc, named after the great astronomer. These stamps were issued by Lithuania (2009), Latvia, Estonia and Sweden (2011). In addition, in 1964, the International Astronomical Union Crater, located on the visible part of the moon, was named after V. Ya. Struve.
Catalogs
Struve, rightfully considered the founder of a whole branch of astronomy, in 1827, as a result of viewing more than one hundred and twenty thousand celestial objects, published a catalog that included more than three thousand double and multiple stars. Most of them - 2343 luminaries - were discovered by the scientist himself. In 1837, his most famous work was published. In the "Micrometric measurements of binary stars" were given the results of over eleven thousand calculations made by Vasily Struve for twelve years using the Derpt refractor. Both catalogs published by the scientist were awarded medals by the Royal Astronomical Society of London.
In 1852, a work was published under the title Middle Positions, where the results of long-term observations of almost three thousand stars were presented. The works that were performed by Struve and his assistants at the Derpt Observatory for almost twenty years were subsequently used more than once in stellar astronomy.
Achievements
Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose brief biography testifies to his enormous role in astronomy, also made a great contribution to the development of a science such as geodesy. In the period from 1822 to 1827, under his leadership, a meridian arc was measured in length from the Gogland Island, located in the Gulf of Finland, to the city of Jacobstadt. In 1828, it was matched with an analogue calculated in the south-west of our country. Then these measurements continued from north to south. And as a result, the length of the entire measured arc was brought up to 25 ° 20 '. She was called Russian-Scandinavian. However, experts know it more as the Struve arc.
Ranks
Vasily Yakovlevich was an honorary member of almost all universities in our country, as well as many foreign scientific societies and academies of sciences. In the mid-nineteenth century, Struve participated in the process of creating the Lisbon Observatory. It is currently owned by the city university, but observations are no longer there. An observatory was created in the image and likeness of the Russian - Pulkovo - which was considered at that time the astronomical world capital. The main consultant in the choice of instruments was the famous Russian astronomer Struve.