Wilhelm Anderson

Wilhelm Anderson
Wilhelm Anderson in Tartu
Born	Wilhelm Robert Karl Anderson (1880-10-28)October 28, 1880 Minsk, Russian Empire
Died	March 26, 1940(1940-03-26) (aged 59) Meseritz-Obrawalde
Nationality	Estonian (Baltic German)
Fields	Astrophysics Astronomy
Institutions	University of Tartu
Alma mater	University of Kazan University of Tartu
Known for	White dwarf mass limit Stoner-Anderson Equation

Wilhelm Robert Karl Anderson (28 October [O.S. 16 October] 1880 – 26 March 1940) was a German-Estonian astrophysicist who studied the physical structure of the stars.

Life

Wilhelm Anderson was born in Minsk (now in Belarus) into an ethnic German family. His younger brothers were the well known mathematician Oskar Anderson (1887-1960) and the folklorist Walter Anderson (1885-1962). Anderson spent some of his youth in Kazan, where his father Nikolai Anderson (1845-1905) was a university professor for Finno-Ugric languages.

He studied at the University of Kazan, where he graduated from the department of mathematics and science in 1909. Between 1910 and 1920, he worked as a physics teacher first in Samara and then from 1918 in Minsk. Together with his brother Walter Anderson, he moved to Tartu (Estonia) in 1920. At the University of Tartu, he first gained a Masters degree in Astronomy in 1923 and then a Doctorate in 1927. In 1934 he became a habilitation candidate at the university, and in 1936 he received an assistant professorship at the University of Tartu. Like the majority of Baltic Germans, he was resettled to Germany in late 1939, where he died in the Sanatorium of Meseritz-Obrawalde, shortly thereafter.

Anderson is probably best known for his work on the mass limit for white dwarf stars (1929, Tartu), which has since become known as the Chandrasekhar Limit. The Stoner-Anderson Equation of state, a result of Anderson's correspondence with Edmund Stoner, is named after him.

Work (selection)

• Über die Existenzmöglichkeit von kosmischem Staube in der Sonnenkorona. Zeitschrift für Physik 28, Berlin, 1924.
• Über die Grenzdichte der Materie und der Energie. Zeitschrift für Physik 56, Berlin, 1929.

See also

• Chandrasekhar limit
• Publications by Wilhelm Anderson listed in Astrophysics Data System

References

• Kuusk, P.; Martinson, I. (1997), "Tartu astrofüüsik Wilhelm Anderson", Akadeemia 2: 358–375, retrieved 2012-11-24 
• Blackman, E. (2006), "Giants of physics found white-dwarf mass limits", Nature (2006-03-09) 440: 148, Bibcode:2006Natur.440..148B, doi:10.1038/440148d 
• Hockey, Th.; Trimble, V.; Palmeri, J.; Bracher, K.; Jarrell, R.; Marché, J.D., eds. (2014), "Anderson, Wilhelm Robert Karl", Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (2nd ed.), Springer, ISBN 9781441999160, retrieved 2013-06-12