Friedrich Bessel
| Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel | |
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C. A. Jensen, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, 1839 (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek)
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| Born |
22 July 1784 Minden, Minden-Ravensberg (present-day Germany) |
| Died | 17 March 1846 (aged 61) Königsberg, Prussia (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia) |
| Residence | Prussia |
| Nationality | Prussian (German) |
| Fields | Astronomy, mathematics, geodesy |
| Institutions | University of Königsberg |
| Doctoral students | Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander |
| Known for |
Bessel functions Stellar parallax Bessel ellipsoid (full list here) |
| Influences | Carl Friedrich Gauss |
| Notable awards |
PhD (Hon): University of Göttingen (1811) Lalande Prize (1811) Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1829 and 1841) |
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (German: [ˈbɛsəl]; 22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax. A special type of mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessel's death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli.
Bessel was born in Minden, Westphalia, administrative center of Minden-Ravensberg, as second son of a civil servant. He was born into a large family in Germany. At the age of 14 Bessel was apprenticed to the import-export concern Kulenkamp at Bremen. The business's reliance on cargo ships led him to turn his mathematical skills to problems in navigation. This in turn led to an interest in astronomy as a way of determining longitude.
Bessel came to the attention of a major figure of German astronomy at the time, Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, by producing a refinement on the orbital calculations for Halley's Comet in 1804, using old observation data taken from Thomas Harriot and Nathaniel Torporley in 1607.
Two years later Bessel left Kulenkamp and became Johann Hieronymus Schröter's assistant at Lilienthal Observatory near Bremen. There he worked on James Bradley's stellar observations to produce precise positions for some 3,222 stars.
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