Abstract
THE LATE PROF. PETERS.—Prof. Christian August Friedrich Peters, whose death was mentioned last week, was the son of a merchant at Hamburg, and was born on September 7, 1806. His father's fortunes suffered in the war times, and his son's education was attended with difficulties, though he endeavoured to cultivate to the best of his power the natural bent for mathematical studies which was very early evinced. After some years the attention of Schumacher was drawn to the young Peters, and he employed him in various calculations for his ephemerides and geodetical works, and in 1826, and for several years subsequently, he was actively engaged in such operations at Hamburg and in Holstein, at the same time pursuing his studies and incidental employment under Schumacher. He then became for a time a pupil of Bessel, and in 1834 was appointed assistant in the observatory at Hamburg, whence in 1839 he was promoted to a position in the newly-founded Central Russian Observatory at Pulkowa, where he worked in theoretical and practical astronomy for ten years. In 1849 he was named Professor of Astronomy in the University of Königsberg, where he remained untU 1854, in which year he was appointed to succeed Petersen in the direction of the observatory at Altona, and at the same time editor of the Astronomische Nachrichten, which he conducted up to the period of his decease. He removed to Kiel when the observatory at Altona was transferred to that place, and died there on the 8th inst., after a severe illness of many months' duration.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 22, 88–89 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022088a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022088a0