Abstract
ASTRONOMERS, and especially spectroscopists will have received with profound regret the brief announcement from the Potsdam Obsrvatory which conveyed the sad inteligence that Prof. H. C. Vogel, the director of that institution nad died on August 13. His scientific life ektends over a period during which all the great triumphs of the spectroscope have been won, and he has been in the front rank of that energetic band of astronomers who have given new direction and increased interest to the science of astronomy. Hence to sketch his life would be to trace the history of spectroscopy from the time that Angstrom published the map of the normal spectrum, or from that of the epoch-marking Indian eclipse, when the riddle of the chromosphere was first read; when the application of the Doppler principle was first applied to star spectra; or when cometary spectra were first studied. Men's minds were still excited over these novel pursuits, and the possibilities they suggested, when Vogel took charge of the Bothkamp Observatory and began that career of continued and successful observation which only terminated with his death. How much has been accomplished since will be appreciated if we recall the fact, that Vogel's earliest work gave us accurate information of the peculiarities of the planetary spectra, and showed the effect of solar rotation in displacing the Fraünhofer lines.
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P., W. Prof. H. C. Vogel . Nature 76, 446–447 (1907). https://doi.org/10.1038/076446b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/076446b0