Peters, Carl F. W.

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PETERS, CARL F. W.

(b. Pulkovo, Russia, 16 April 1844; d. Königsberg, Germany [now Kaliningrad, R. S. F. S. R.], 2 November 1894)

astronomy, geodesy.

Peters was the son of the astronomer Christian A. F. Peters. Between 1862 and 1866 he studied at Kiel, Berlin, and Munich, became adjunct at the Hamburg observatory in 1867, and received the Ph.D. at Gottingen in 1868. He then became his father’s assistant at the Altona observatory. In this post he determined the length of the seconds pendulum for Altona, Berlin, and Königsberg and in 1870–1871 executed new observations with Bessel’s pendulum apparatus between Köngisberg and Güldenstein, a castle in Holstein. He was appointed observer in 1872 and the following year moved to Kiel, where the Altona observatory had been relocated. Here he became academic lecturer in astronomy in 1876.

After his father’s death Peters edited three volumes of the Astronomische Nachrichten(97–99) during 1880–1881, and in 1882 he became assistant professor of astronomy. A year later he assumed the directorship of the chronometer Observatorium of the imperial navy, a post conferred on his because of his extremely careful investigations of the rate of chronometers. He determined that they were influenced not only by temperature but also by humidity and magnetism. He also reduced the existing observations of the double star 61 Cygni, deriving an accurate orbit, and edited the German version of A. N. Sawitsch’s Practical Astronomy.

In 1888 Peters was appointed professor at the University of Königsberg and director of its observatory, where he began observations with the meridian circle. His early death, after a long illness, prevented any major achievements in this new field. Peters was a man of great kindness and cordiality, and of an unusually humane temperament.

BIBILOGRAPHY

Peter’s writings include Astronomische Tafeln und Formeln (Hamburg, 1871); Entfernung der Erde von der Sonne (Berlin, 1873); Beobachtungen mit dem Besselschen Pendelapparat in Königsberg und Güldenstein (Hamburg, 1874); “Einige Bemerkungen uber die Vorbestimmung des Chronometerstandes,” in Annalen der Hydrographie…, 5 (1877), 207–214; Die Fixsterne, in the series Wissenschaft der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1883); “Magnetische Einflüsse auf den Gang der Chronometer,” in Annalen der Hydrographie…, 12 (1884), 316–318; “Bestimmung der Bahn des Doppelsterns 61 Cygni,” in Astronomische Nachrichten, 113 (1885), 321–340; and “Einfluss der Feuchtigkeit der Luft auf den Gang der Chronometer,” in Annalen der Hydrographie, 15 (1887), 505–512.