Abstract
THE centenary occurs on October 15 of the birth of the German astronomer Friedrich Tietjen who, in 1881, with Tisserand, E. C. Pickering, Tempel and Gylden, was made a foreign associate of the Royal Astronomical Society. Born in a village in the duchy of Oldenburg, Tietjen left school at the age of fifteen years to work on his father's farm, but some years later, having relinquished his right to the farm, he was able to attend the Universities of Gottingen and Berlin, and in 1862 at twenty-eight years of age became an assistant under Encke at the Berlin Observatory. Three years later, he became first assistant to Foerster, Encke's successor, and this post he held until 1874. In 1866 he discovered a minor planet, and in the same year, with Albrecht, carried out geodetic operations in connexion with the Mid-European Survey. In 1868 he went to the East Indies with Sporer and Engelman to observe the solar eclipse of August 18. An indefatigable worker and a remarkably facile computer, in 1874 he was made editor of the “Berlin Jahrbuch” and four years later succeeded Bremiker as editor of the “Nautisches Jahrbuch”. With Foerster he also managed a school of instruction in scientific computation. He died at the age of sixty years on June 21, 1895, having suffered from ill-health for several years.
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Friedrich Tietjen, 1834–95. Nature 134, 564 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134564b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134564b0