Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers
Born	October 11, 1758(1758-10-11) Arbergen
Died	March 2, 1840(1840-03-02) (aged 81) Bremen
Nationality	German
Fields	Medicine Astronomy
Known for	Olbers' paradox Pallas Vesta

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers /ˈoʊlbərz/ (October 11, 1758 – March 2, 1840) was a German physician and astronomer.

Life and career

Olbers was born in Arbergen, near Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen. After his graduation in 1780, he began practicing medicine in Bremen, Germany. At night he dedicated his time to astronomical observation, making the upper story of his home into an observatory. He also devised the first satisfactory method of calculating cometary orbits.

On March 28, 1802, Olbers discovered and named the asteroid Pallas. Five years later, on March 29, 1807, he discovered the asteroid Vesta, which he allowed Carl Friedrich Gauss to name. As the word "asteroid" was not yet coined, the literature of the time referred to these minor planets as planets in their own right. He proposed that the asteroid belt, where these objects lay, was the remnants of a planet that had been destroyed. The current view of most scientists is that tidal effects from the planet Jupiter disrupted the planet-formation process in the asteroid belt.

On March 6, 1815, Olbers also discovered a periodic comet, now named after him (formally designated 13P/Olbers).

Olbers was deputed by his fellow citizens to assist at the baptism of Napoleon II of France on June 9, 1811, and he was a member of the corps legislatif in Paris 1812-1813. He died in Bremen aged 81. He was twice married, and one son survived him.

Olbers' paradox, described by him in 1823 (and then reformulated in 1826), states that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the supposition of an infinite and eternal static universe.

In 1827, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Honors

The following celestial features are named for him:

• 13P/Olbers is a periodic comet.
• Asteroid 1002 Olbersia.
• The crater Olbers on the Moon.
• Olbers, a 200-km-diameter dark albedo feature on Vesta's surface

Further reading

• Cunningham, C. J. (2006). The Origin of the Asteroids: Olbers versus Regner. Star Lab Press. ISBN 0-9708162-5-1. 

• Bessel, F. W. (1845). "Über Olbers. Von Herrn Geh. - Rath Bessel". Astronomische Nachrichten 22 (18): 265. Bibcode 1845AN.....22..265B. doi:10.1002/asna.18450221802. 

• William Herschel (1800 - 1814). "Observations on the Nature of the New Celestial Body Discovered by Dr. Olbers, and of the Comet Which Was Expected to Appear Last January in Its Return from the Sun". Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1 (0): 271–272. doi:10.1098/rspl.1800.0148. 

• Lynn, W. T. (1907). "The Discovery of Vesta". The Observatory 30: 103–105. Bibcode 1907Obs....30..103L. 

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.  - see, for instance, "Olbers," Britannica

Persondata
Name	Olbers, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthaus
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 11, 1758
Place of birth	Arbergen
Date of death	March 2, 1840
Place of death	Bremen