Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker

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Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker (28 May 1788 – 21 December 1862) was a German astronomer. In German, his name is spelt Karl Ludwig Christian Rümker; he was also known as Charles Rümker, Charles Rumker, Charles Luis Rumker, Christian Carl Ludwig Rümker and Dr. Charles Stargard Rumker.

Rümker was born in Burg Stargard, in Mecklenburg, Germany, the son of J. F. Rümker, court-councillor. He showed an aptitude for mathematics and studied at the Builders' Academy, Berlin, graduating in 1807 as a master builder. Instead of a career in building, he taught mathematics in Hamburg until 1809 when he went to England. He served as a midshipman in the British East India Company and then in the British merchant navy from 1811 until 1817, and was director of the school of navigation at Hamburg from 1819 until 1820.

In 1821 he went to New South Wales as astronomer at the observatory built at Parramatta by Sir Thomas Brisbane. James Dunlop was second assistant. Rümker was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Astronomical Society together with £100, for his re-discovery of Encke's comet in 1822 and also received the gold medal of the Institute of France. In June 1823 having fallen out with Brisbane he left the observatory. He had been granted 1000 acres (4 km²) of land on the west side of the Nepean River on the assurance that he would devote his time to scientific pursuits. Brisbane in a dispatch to Earl Bathurst in November 1823 requested that the grant should not be confirmed beyond 300 acres (1.2 km²) because Rümker had "completely broken" his promise. (H.R. of A., ser. I, vol. XI, p. 154). Bathurst, however, refused Brisbane's request (ibid. p. 305), realizing that this would be a case of one man's word against another's if it were further investigated. After Brisbane's departure Rümker was placed in charge of the observatory by the government in May 1826, and it was intended that he should measure the arc of the meridian. It was not, however, possible for him to have done much work on this. It would have been necessary to obtain instruments from London and he left the colony about the end of 1828. The results of his observations at Parramatta were published in Part III of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1829 and in the Royal Astronomical Society's Memoirs, Vol. III. Rümker also contributed an article to the Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales, edited by Barron Field, the first collection of scientific papers published in Australia.

Rümker returned to Europe in 1830 and took charge of the observatory at Hamburg. His chief work was concerned with the cataloging of stars: a preliminary catalogue of the stars of the Southern Hemisphere was published in 1832 at Hamburg, and from 1846-1852 he published his great catalogue of 12,000 stars.

In 1857 he went to reside at Lisbon, Portugal, where he died in 1862.

His son Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker, born in 1832, at Hamburg, was also an astronomer.

[edit] Notable writings

  • Preliminary catalogue of fixed stars, etc. (1832)
  • Handbuch der Schiffahrtskunde (1857)
  • Mittlere Örter von 12.000 Fixsternen (1843–1852, 4 parts; new series 1857, 2 parts)
  • Längenbestimmung durch den Mond (1849).

[edit] References