Struve Vasily Yakovlevich is 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. Vasily Yakovlevich Struve was a German and Russian scientist, the founder of astronomy, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the first head of the Pulkovo Observatory, the founder of the Russian Geographical Society.
Short biography
The founder of the famous dynasty was born in 1793 in Altona, a small German town. His father was the director of the local gymnasium. Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose photo is in every astronomy textbook, at first received a completely different education. His first major was philology. The future scientist was trained at the University of Dorpat, which today is called Tartu University. However, Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, the founder of the dynasty of astronomers, found his calling precisely in natural science.
Engaged in philology under the guidance of his father, the young man at the age of fifteen was fully prepared for admission to a higher educational institution. At this time, his older brother was already teaching atDorpat gymnasium. That is why, and also out of a desire to avoid conscription into the army 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 much carried away by 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 lecturer, assisted him in every possible way in his first steps in stellar science. Already in 1813, Struve defended his dissertation.
First steps
At about the same time he became a teacher and at the same time was appointed as an observer astronomer at the same university. Despite the extreme poverty and scarcity of inventory, Struve still managed to work actively. He even managed to accomplish a very important task for those times: not having the appropriate instruments for observing the declinations of the stars, he attempted to do this with the help of a transit instrument to calculate the right ascensions of some circumpolar stars.
Private life
Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography has been inseparable from astronomy since that time, got married in 1815. Emilia Wall, a resident of Altona, became his chosen one. He lived with her until 1834. Twelve children were born in this marriage, however, four of them died in childhood.
From 1828, Struve took custody of his nephew Theodore, whose guardian was initially his brotherLudwig is professor of anatomy at Dorpat University.
After the death of Emilia, in 1834 he married Johanna Bartels, who was the daughter of the mathematician Bartels. With her, Struve had six more children, of whom only four survived their father.
In the Derpt Observatory
In 1819, Struve was appointed its director. At the same time, he became an ordinary professor at the university. During his twenty years of work as director of the Derpt Observatory, Vasily Yakovlevich Struve equipped it with first-class and very rare instruments and instruments for that time. When, at the end of 1824, a fourteen-foot Fraunhofer and Uschneider refractor with a nine-inch objective, the best and largest at that time, was able to acquire, the astronomer threw himself into the work with indescribable enthusiasm.
A period of vigorous and fruitful scientific activity began for him, which lasted more than thirteen years. If earlier Struve Vasily Yakovlevich, an astronomer from God, was content only with finding and measuring double star systems already known since the time of Herschel, then with the acquisition of excellent observational means from studying the luminaries already discovered by others, he managed to move on to independent analysis. He observed all the stars up to the ninth magnitude between the North Pole and the twentieth degree of declination south. Moreover, in the process of studying Vasily Yakovlevich Struve, whose biography as an accomplished scientist began precisely with the Derpt Observatory, along the way he was able to discover aboutthree 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 for a suitable place in the vicinity of the Northern capital began. It turned out to be difficult. The observatory needed an elevated place, but the Gulf of Finland stretched to the west of the city, and lowlands stretched to the south and east, at a distance of up to twenty kilometers. It made no sense to build to the north of St. Petersburg, since in this case the entire southern part of the sky - the most important zone for observations - was dusty with a huge settlement located nearby.
In 1830, Emperor Nicholas I received a report written by Vasily Yakovlevich Struve. In it, he described in detail the tasks that were set for the new and rather large astronomical observatory, which was supposed to be built near St. Petersburg. Soon it was decided to start construction twenty kilometers south of the city - on the Pulkovo Heights. It was decided to entrust the architectural work to the famous Russian architect Bryullov. Struve, who at that time was still working at Dorpat University, was appointed director and manager of organizational work on the creation of a new observatory. Beginning in 1833, he became the most active participant in the process. The Pulkovo Observatory opened in August 1839. And Struve Vasily Yakovlevich became her firstdirector.
The astronomer from the first day proved to be an excellent organizer. From the moment the first stone was laid in the observatory building, which took place on June 3, 1835, until its opening in 1839, Struve himself supervised almost all construction work.
The best and largest fifteen-inch refractor telescope at that time was installed here. In terms of the we alth and quality of the installed equipment, the Pulkovo Observatory literally immediately after its opening was in first place in the world. And according to the subsequent recognition of the famous American scientist Newcomb, it became the astronomical capital of the world.
Work at the Pulkovo Observatory
In the very first years of its existence, work on the study of binary stars continued here, 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. To determine the distances to the stars - this question interested and worried many eminent scientists of that time. Struve, hoping to prove the theory of parallax 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 to Vega determined by him was subsequently corrected by scientists on the basis of already more accurate measurements, nevertheless, this work by Struve became one of the first successful works in the history of astronomy to determinedistance to a particular star. It was on its basis that more than one monumental work was subsequently created. She proved that the stars are extremely distant suns, the light rays from which, propagating at a speed of 300 thousand km / s, reach the Earth in tens and even hundreds of years.
Sunset
The fruitful activity of V. Ya. Struve continued until 1858. And when a serious illness, having mowed him down, put him out of action, his son, the talented scientist Otto Struve, took over the leadership 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 the real clustering of stars towards the central parts in the Galaxy. He also substantiated the conclusion that there is a value of interstellar absorption of light. Invaluable for stellar astronomy is his work en titled "Etudes of stellar astronomy". It was in it that Struve substantiated his assumption that there is a fact of absorption of light in interstellar spaces and an increase in the number of stars per unit volume as they approach the Milky Way.
A scientist who studies 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 rightfully considered fundamental in this branch of astronomy, for the first time in the world was able to measure distancesto 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 neighboring countries. Struve discovered a planetary nebula in the constellation Ophiuchus. Under the leadership of Vasily Yakovlevich and surveyor K. Tenner, a degree measurement of meridian arcs from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the mouth of the Danube River was carried out. Very valuable materials have been 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 statesmen and politicians, is the founder of a whole branch of stellar science. His business was continued by his son Otto, two grandsons - Herman and Ludwig, as well as a great-grandson - an astrophysicist. The Struve family also includes a well-known chemist, diplomat, orientalist and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Memory
The name of the famous scientist has not been forgotten. In 1913, the minor planet number 768, discovered by the Russian astronomer Neuimin, was named Struveana in honor of astronomers from the Struve family dynasty.
In 1954, a postage stamp was issued in memory of the great scientist. It was dedicated to the Pulkovo Observatory. It depicts a portrait of V. Ya. Struve and two other famous Russian astronomers. On the centenary of the death of Vasily Yakovlevich, in 1964, another stamp of the USSR 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 1964The International Astronomical Union named the crater located on the visible part of the Moon named after V. Ya. Struve.
Catalogs
Struve, rightfully considered the founder of an entire 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 scientists themselves. In 1837, his most famous work was published. In "Micrometric measurements of binary stars" were given the results of more than eleven thousand calculations made by Vasily Struve over a period of twelve years using a Derpt refractor. Both catalogs published by the scientist were awarded medals from the Royal Astronomical Society of London.
In 1852, a work was published called "Middle Positions", where the results of many years of observations of almost three thousand stars were given. The works that were carried out 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 great role in astronomy, also made a great contribution to the development of such a science as geodesy. In the period from 1822 to 1827, under his leadership, the meridian arc was measured from the island of Gogland, located in the Gulf of Finland, to the city of Jakobstadt. In 1828, it was matched with an analogue designed for the southwest of our country. Then these measurements continued from north to south. And as a result, the length of the entire measured arc was brought to 25°20'. She was called Russian-Scandinavian. However, experts know it more like a 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 middle of the nineteenth century, Struve participated in the process of creating the Lisbon Observatory. It is currently owned by the city's university, but observations are no longer made there. An observatory was created in the image and likeness of the Russian one - Pulkovo - which was considered at that time the astronomical capital of the world. The well-known Russian astronomer Struve was the main consultant in the choice of instruments.
