Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers (; ; 11 October 1758 – 2 March 1840) was a German physician and astronomer.

Life and career

Olbers was born in Arbergen, Germany, today part of Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen (1777–80). While he was at Göttingen, he studied mathematics with Abraham Gotthelf Kästner. In 1779, while attending to a sick fellow student, he devised a method of calculating cometary orbits which made an epoch in the treatment of the subject. It was the first satisfactory method of calculating cometary orbits. After his graduation in 1780, he began practicing medicine in Bremen. At night he dedicated his time to astronomical observation, making the upper story of his home into an observatory.

In 1800, Olbers was one of 24 astronomers invited to participate in the group known as the " celestial police", dedicated to finding new planets in the solar system. On 28 March 1802, Olbers discovered and named the asteroid Pallas. Five years later, on 29 March 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 disrupted the planet-formation process in the asteroid belt. On 6 March 1815, Olbers discovered a periodic comet, now named after him (formally designated 13P/Olbers