Abstract
HUGO VON SEELIGER, who died on December 2, was born at Bielitz-Biala, Austria, on September 23, 1849. After studying at the universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig, he was appointed observer at Bonn Observatory in 1873 and remained there for four years, taking part in the observations of the zone 4o°-5o° for the Astronom-ische Gesellschaft Catalogue, and being a member of the expedition to observe the 1874 transit of Venus.. After a short period at Gotha he went to Munich in 1882 as Director of the Observatory and professor of astronomy. He remained there for the rest of his life, and became famous as a teacher, Schwarzschild having been one of his pupils. He also made several theoretical researches both on stellar problems and those relating to the solar system. He was a pioneer in the application of statistical methods to the study of star density, and the size and shape of the stellar system; his estimate of the absorption of light in space was 0.3 mag. in 12,000 light years. He was interested in the excess of the motion of Mercury's perihelion over its theoretical value. He examined whether any distribution of the matter forming the zodiacal light could explain this, without introducing other anomalies in the motion of the nearer planets. Another study related to the brightness of Saturn's ring. Basing his work on Maxwell's deduction that the ring was composed of small particles, he obtained expressions for its change in brightness at different distances from opposition, which were verified by Miiller's photometric observations.
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[Obituaries]. Nature 115, 309 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115309a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115309a0