Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (
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 disrupt the formation of planets 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 at the age of eighty-one. 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:
- Olbers, a 200-km-diameter dark albedo feature on Vesta's surface
