Wilhelm Gotthelf Lohrmann (31 January 1796 – 20 February 1840) was a Saxon cartographer,

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while t ...

and patron of the sciences. He was born in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

, the son of a brickmaster. In 1810 he attended school at the ''Pfeilschmidtschen Garnisonsschule'', then studied

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

. His mother died in 1812, his father in 1817, and his first wife Christiane Amalie died in 1827. The couple had married in 1819, and she had borne six children. Wilhelm would marry again in 1828 to Henriette. In 1821 he made observations of the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, enabling him to produce a ''Mondkärtchen'' (lunar map). This map was further developed in 1824 as ''Topographie der sichtbaren Mondoberfläche'' ("Topography of the visible surface of the moon"), and the four sections are now stored as a historical work at the

Technische Universität Dresden TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

library. His maps were completed in 1836, but were not published before his death. In 1878, Johann Schmidt edited and published all 25 sections of the map as ''Mondkarte in 25 Sektionen''. These were republished in 1963. The maps used orthographic projection of the surface as viewed at mean libration. He was responsible for the founding of the ''Technische Bildungsanstalt Dresden'' ( Dresden Technical School) on May 1, 1828, and was the first director of that institution. Wilhelm's instrument would later be used by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe for his observations of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

and sunspots. The asteroid 4680 Lohrmann was named after him, as was the crater Lohrmann on the

References

* Lohrmann, WG, "Topographie der Sichtbaren Mondoberflache", Dresden-Leipzig, 1824. * Lohrmann, Wilhelm Gotthelf; Schmidt, Johann Friedrich Julius; Ahnert, Paul, "Mondkarte in 25 Sektionen", Leipzig, J. A. Barth, 1963. * Birmingham, J., "Review (Lohrmann's Lunar Map)", ''Astronomical Register'', vol. 16, 1878.

External links

Über Lohrmann
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lohrmann, Wilhelm Gotthelf 19th-century German astronomers Selenographers Scientists from Dresden 1796 births 1840 deaths