Georg Hermann Struve
Encyclopedia
Georg Otto Hermann Struve was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 astronomer from the Struve family
Struve family
The Struve family were a dynasty of five generations of astronomers from the 18th to 20th centuries. Members of the family were also prominent in chemistry, government and diplomacy.-Origins:...

 and the son of Hermann Struve
Hermann Struve
Karl Hermann Struve was a Russian astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as German Ottovich Struve or German Ottonovich Struve ....

.

Georg was born in 1886 in Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo is the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.-History:In...

 – a former Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 residence of the imperial family
Romanov
The House of Romanov was the second and last imperial dynasty to rule over Russia, reigning from 1613 until the February Revolution abolished the crown in 1917...

 and visiting nobility, located 26 kilometres (16.2 mi) south from the center of St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

. In 1895, his family moved to Königsberg
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...

. After graduating from a gymnasium there, between 1905 and 1910 Struve studied at the University of Berlin and University of Heidelberg. After defending his PhD thesis in 1910, he worked till 1914 at the observatories at Bohn Observatory and Hamburg-Bergedorf Observatory
Hamburg-Bergedorf Observatory
Hamburger Sternwarte is an astronomical observatory located in the Bergedorf borough of the city of Hamburg in northern Germany. It is owned and operated by the University of Hamburg, Germany since 1968, although it was founded in 1825 by the City of Hamburg and moved to its present location in...

, and between 1914 and 1919 at the Naval Observatory of Wilhelmshaven. In 1919, he moved to the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory established by his father Hermann Struve
Hermann Struve
Karl Hermann Struve was a Russian astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as German Ottovich Struve or German Ottonovich Struve ....

. There, he studied celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of celestial objects. The field applies principles of physics, historically classical mechanics, to astronomical objects such as stars and planets to produce ephemeris data. Orbital mechanics is a subfield which focuses on...

 and continued the work of his father, analyzing movement of satellites of Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

 and Uranus
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky Uranus , the father of Cronus and grandfather of Zeus...

. For observation of Moons of Saturn, in 1925 he visited Lick Observatory
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA...

 where he met his cousin Otto Struve
Otto Struve
Otto Struve was a Russian astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as Otto Lyudvigovich Struve ; however, he spent most of his life and his entire scientific career in the United States...

. For the same purpose, in 1926 he went to Union Observatory
Union Observatory
Union Observatory was an astronomical observatory located in the suburb Observatory, Johannesburg, South Africa. It bears IAU code 078.Known as the Transvaal Observatory in its early years, it became the Republic Observatory in 1961...

 in South Africa where he was very pleased with the quality of the obtained images. Around 1930, he participated in the Eros campaign, where observations of an asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 433 Eros
433 Eros
433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1898, and the first asteroid to be orbited by a probe . It is an S-type asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size, the second-largest NEA after 1036 Ganymed, and belongs to the Amor group.Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid, the first known...

 was used to determine the value of solar parallax
Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. The term is derived from the Greek παράλλαξις , meaning "alteration"...

. Struve also used US observatories. At Yerkes Observatory
Yerkes Observatory
Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The observatory, which calls itself "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," was founded in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes...

, he again met his cousin Otto and reanalyzed observations of the complex multiple star system zeta Cancri
Zeta Cancri
Zeta Cancri is a star system in the constellation Cancer containing at least four stars. It has the traditional name Tegmine "the shell "...

 by their grandfather Otto Wilhelm von Struve
Otto Wilhelm von Struve
Otto Wilhelm von Struve was a Russian astronomer. In Russian, his name is normally given as Otto Vasil'evich Struve...

.

Georg Struve was married to Marie von Mokk, daughter of a Prussian general. They had two sons, Wilfried (born in Wilhelmshafen, Germany, 1914 – died in Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, Germany, 1992) and Reinhardt. Whereas Wilfried became a scientist working in astronomy and acoustics, Reinhardt died during the World War II in 1943. On May 28, 1933, Georg Struve was taken to the hospital with an acute pneumonia and died on June 10.
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