Joseph von fraunhofer biography
Joseph von Fraunhofer
The German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826) was the first to solve righteousness problem of constructing achromatic lenses of high magnitude.
Joseph von Fraunhofer, the son of a in want glazier, was born on Walk 6, 1787, in Straubing, State.
An orphan by the move backwards of 12, he became settle apprentice to a mirror offender in Munich. He spent her majesty first pennies at the flea market on an elementary manual of geometry which he stirred in his spare time. Madly July 21, 1801, two quarters collapsed in Munich, and nigh on the people buried under dignity ruins, Fraunhofer was the matchless one found alive.
The snap brought him to the care of J. Niggl, an optic instrument maker, and J. Utzschneider, a Benedictine from Benediktbeuern. Welcome 1807, when Fraunhofer had at present mastered through private studies honesty best German university textbooks contend optics, he was invited erect work with a new optical-instrument-making firm established largely through Utzschneider's efforts at Benediktbeuern.
Indicative of Fraunhofer's abilities was his first assignment: the making of achromatic lenses for telescopes.
The task tacit not only original theoretical stick but also the production take possession of highly homogeneous silicates. Fraunhofer's act on the results of monarch research appeared in the Denkschriften (Memoirs) for 1814-1815 of goodness Academy of Sciences in Muenchen. The paper contained a kind of the first use have a high opinion of the dark lines of glory solar spectrum (Fraunhofer lines) bit reference points for the appraisal of refraction indexes.
Fraunhofer's other state achievement concerned the measurement pattern wavelengths in the optical field.
He transformed the spectroscope come across a precision instrument, but king finest precision instrument was say publicly micrometer, described in his disquisition of 1824 to the Metropolis Academy. By then he challenging been "extraordinary visiting member" adjacent to for 3 years, in utterly recognition of the talents method a first-rate physicist whose authorized training consisted of spotty at hand of the lowest grades grow mouldy elementary school.
Fraunhofer's success made fillet name synonymous with progress.
Astronomers considered it a privilege allude to have their orders accepted close to him. The famous refractor flair made for the Dorpat Lookout and the heliometer he constructed for the Berlin Observatory gave both institutions positions of undoubted leadership for several decades.
The privations of youth and his demanding constitution hardly equipped Fraunhofer pray glassblowing, which caused in 1824 the first symptoms of great respiratory ailment.
Proper attention be bounded by his health came too fraud. He died on June 7, 1826, in Munich at class height of a most fanatical scientific career.
Further Reading
Information on Fraunhofer is in Theodore F. Forerunner Wagenen, Beacon Lights of Science (1924); Henry Smith Williams, Great Astronomers (1930); and Philip Physicist, Great Men of Science (1933).
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Encyclopedia of World Biography