Christfried Kirch
Christfried Kirch | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | |
Died | 9 March 1740 | (aged 45)
Nationality | German |
Scientific career | |
Fields | astronomy |
Christfried Kirch (24 December 1694, Guben – 9 March 1740, Berlin) was a German astronomer and almanac publisher.
Life and work
He was born in Guben, Germany the son of the astronomers Gottfried Kirch and Maria Margaretha Kirch. Christfried had already participated in the solar observations of his father at the age of 12. His astronomical studies began in Leipzig and Danzig.
From 1716 until his death in 1740 he was, like his father, Direktor of the Berlin Observatory, in spite of repeated requests from the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. In 1717 he had received his father's former post at the Königlich Preußischen Sozietät der Wissenschaften. In the continuation of his father's work, especially in almanac calculation, he was aided by his mother and his younger sister .
In 1726 Kirch was made responsible for the academy's library which up until then had been the responsibility of the secretary of the academy, Johann Theodor Jablonski, and was appointed Librarian in 1735.[1]
Christfried Kirch published many articles in several journals. He described the comet of 1718, observations of sunspots and the surface of Venus and of Jupiter, of occultation of the moons of Jupiter, of variable stars, as well as the Northern Lights and the Earth's magnetic field. In 1730 appeared his greatest work Observationes astronomicae selectiores in observatorio regio Berolinensi habitae, quibus adjectae sunt annotationes quaedam et animadversiones geographicae et chronologicae, aliaque ad astronomicam scientiam pertinentia.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1742.[2]
Literature
- Siegmund Günther (1882), "Kirch, Gottfried", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 15, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 787–788 (Familienartikel)
References
- ^ BBAW: Geschichte der Akademiebibliothek
- ^ "Fellow details". Royal Society. Retrieved 24 January 2017.[permanent dead link]
External links
- All articles with dead external links
- Articles with dead external links from December 2023
- Articles with permanently dead external links
- Articles with short description
- Short description matches Wikidata
- Use dmy dates from August 2022
- Articles with hCards
- Articles containing Latin-language text
- CS1 German-language sources (de)
- Articles with dead external links from November 2016
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with BNF identifiers
- Articles with BNFdata identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with ICCU identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with DTBIO identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- 1694 births
- 1740 deaths
- People from Guben
- 18th-century German astronomers
- Fellows of the Royal Society