Astronomers 19th century
Joseph Georg Böhm was an Austrian astronomer, astrophysicist, cartographer, mathematician, and educator.
At the University of Prague, Böhm attended lectures in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and, after receiving his doctorate, became an assistant at the Vienna Observatory under Joseph Johann von Littrow. He then worked at the observatory at Othen and taught mathematics at the University of Salzburg. In 1839 he was appointed professor of mathematics and practical geometry at the University of Innsbruck, and in 1848 he was elected its rector. In 1852 Böhm was appointed director of the Prague Observatory and professor of theoretical and practical astronomy at the University of Prague.
Georg Böhm published several significant astronomical papers on solar observation. He is the creator of several instruments for astronomical measurements and observations, and he designed the Uranoscope and Universal Gnomon for amateur astronomical observations for the general public. As a member of the commission for the repair of the Prague Astronomical Clock, which he joined in 1865, he wrote a detailed description of it in the work Beschreibung der alterthümlichen Prager Rathausuhr. In addition to astronomy and its popularization, he was also involved in agriculture, economics, and geodesy. One of his important works is Ballistic Experiments (1865).
Frederick William Herschel (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750–1848). Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was a British astronomer and son of the Uranus discoverer Wilhelm Herschel. He is credited with the first double star and nebula catalogues of the southern starry sky, which he observed during a five-year stay near Cape Town.
Francis Gladheim Pease was an American astronomer and optical instrument maker.
Pease graduated from the Armor Institute of Technology in Chicago, worked as an optician and observer at Yerkes Observatory, and from 1904 also made optical instruments at Mount Wilson Observatory, where he worked for 34 years. Pease designed a 100-inch telescope as well as a 50-foot interferometric telescope, with which he made direct measurements of the diameters of stars. He also participated in the development of the Hale telescope.
In 1928 he found the first planetary nebula in a globular cluster (M15), now cataloged as Pease. Francis Gladheim Pease also took very high quality photographs of the surface of the Moon, and a crater on this Earth satellite is named in his honor.
Giuseppe Piazzi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician and priest.
Around 1764 Piazzi became a Theatine priest, in 1779 he was appointed professor of theology in Rome, and in 1780 - professor of higher mathematics at the Academy of Palermo. Later, with the assistance of the Viceroy of Sicily, he founded an observatory in Palermo. There he compiled his great catalog of the positions of 7,646 stars and showed that most stars move relative to the Sun. There, on January 1, 1801, Piazzi also discovered the asteroid Ceres.
Giuseppe Piazzi's merits were appreciated: he was a member of the Royal Society of London, a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. A crater on the Moon is named in his honor.
Franz Xaver Freiherr (from 1801) von Zach, Baron (Hungarian: Zách János Ferenc) was an Austro-German astronomer, surveyor, mathematician, science historian and officer of Hungarian origin. He rendered outstanding services in the exploration of the solar system and the organization of international astronomy, after whom a lunar crater (Zach) and an asteroid ((999) Zachia) were named, among others. He was also the founder of the first scientific journals and organised the first astronomical congress in 1798.