Friedrich Bessel

Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

:...Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician (systematizer of the Bessel functions, which were discovered by Daniel Bernoulli). He was the first astronomer to determine the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax.
Although he left school at the age of 14, he was appointed in January 1810 as director of the Königsberg Observatory by King Frederick William III of Prussia. On the recommendation of fellow mathematician and physicist Carl Gauss he was awarded an honorary doctor degree from the University of Göttingen in March 1811. Bessel won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1829 and 1841. The asteroid 1552 Bessel was named in his honour..."

"...Bessel was born in Minden, administrative center of Minden-Ravensberg, as second son of a civil servant. ..."

"...Bessel was able to achieve the feat for which he is best remembered today: he is credited with being the first to use parallax in calculating the distance to a star..."

"...Despite lacking a university education, Bessel was a major figure in astronomy during his lifetime. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1823, and the largest crater in the Moon's Mare Serenitatis is named Bessel after him. Bessel's work in 1840 contributed in some degree to the discovery of Neptune. In 1832, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bessel won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1829 and 1841.

In the second decade of the 19th century while studying the dynamics of 'many-body' gravitational systems, Bessel developed what are now known as Bessel functions. Critical for the solution of certain differential equations, these functions are used throughout both classical and quantum physics. Even in the absence of any work in astronomy, Bessel's role in developing the functions which now bear his name would have, by itself, placed him among the most significant and influential mathematicians of the 19th century..."

"...Bessel was son-in-law of the chemist and pharmacist Karl Gottfried Hagen, whose other son-in-law was the physicist Franz Ernst Neumann. The physician and biologist Hermann August Hagen and the hydraulic engineer Gotthilf Hagen, who was Bessel's student and assistant from 1816 to 1818, belong to his relatives. Bessel had two sons and three daughters. His eldest daughter Marie married Georg Adolf Erman, member of the scholar family Erman. One of their sons was the renowned egyptologist Adolf Erman..."

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_bessel