Abstract
CARL LUDWIG VON LITTROW, whose death has been announced during the past week, was born at Kasanon July 18, 1811. His father, Joseph Johann von Littrow, the eminent astronomer, afterwards Director of the Imperial Observatory at Vienna, was at that time Professor of Astronomy in the University of Kasan, where he founded an observatory. The son was educated under the father's direction, and in 1831 was appointed assistant at the Observatory at Vienna, of which institution the elder Littrow had taken the superintendence in 1819, removing thence from Ofen. In 1835 he first appeared as an astronomical writer, having in that year published an account of Hell's Journey to Wardoe and of his Observations of the Transit of Venus in 1769 at that place, from the original day-books; also a History of the Discovery of General Gravitation, by Newton, and Treatises upon Comets, more especially on Halley's, which was then appearing. In 1839 he published at Stutgard a Celestial Atlas, and a work which in the Catalogue of the Pulkova Library is called a Translation of Airy's “Popu-läre physische Astronomie,” by which is most probably intended the well-known Treatise on Gravitation published by the Astronomer-Royal in 1834, though elsewhere Littrow's work is stated to refer to the history of Astronomy during the early part of the nineteenth century, presented to the British Association in 1832.
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Carl Von Littrow . Nature 17, 83–84 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/017083a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017083a0