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This is a list of geodesists, people who made notable contributions to geodesy, whether or not geodesy was their primary field. These include historical figures who laid the foundations for the field of geodesy.
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This is a list of geodesists, people who made notable contributions to geodesy, whether or not geodesy was their primary field. These include historical figures who laid the foundations for the field of geodesy.
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax. Certain important mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessel's death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli before being generalised by Bessel.
The metre is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium.
1774 (MDCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar, the 1774th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 774th year of the 2nd millennium, the 74th year of the 18th century, and the 5th year of the 1770s decade. As of the start of 1774, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve was a Baltic German astronomer and geodesist. He is best known for studying double stars and initiating a triangulation survey later named Struve Geodetic Arc in his honor.
The history of geodesy (/dʒiːˈɒdɪsi/) began during antiquity and ultimately blossomed during the Age of Enlightenment.
The office of Minister-President, or Prime Minister, of Prussia existed from 1848, when it was formed by King Frederick William IV during the 1848–49 Revolution, until the abolition of Prussia in 1947 by the Allied Control Council.
Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert Graf von Berg was an Imperial Russian nobleman, statesman, diplomat and general of Baltic German descent. Berg was a count of the Austrian Empire and Grand Duchy of Finland and the 5th last man to be promoted General-Field Marshal in the history of the Russian Empire. He served as the Governor-General of Finland from 1854 to 1861 and the last Viceroy of the Kingdom of Poland from 1863 to 1874.
The Struve family were a Baltic German noble family of Eastphalian origin and originated in Magdeburg, the family produced five generations of astronomers from the 18th to 20th centuries. Members of the family were also prominent in chemistry, government and diplomacy.
The history of the metre starts with the Scientific Revolution that is considered to have begun with Nicolaus Copernicus's publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Increasingly accurate measurements were required, and scientists looked for measures that were universal and could be based on natural phenomena rather than royal decree or physical prototypes. Rather than the various complex systems of subdivision then in use, they also preferred a decimal system to ease their calculations.
Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero, 1st Marquis of Mulhacén, was a Spanish divisional general and geodesist. He represented Spain at the 1875 Conference of the Metre Convention and was the first president of the International Committee for Weights and Measures. As a forerunner geodesist and president of the International Geodetic Association, he played a leading role in the worldwide dissemination of the metric system. His activities resulted in the distribution of a platinum and iridium prototype of the metre to all States parties to the Metre Convention during the first meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1889. These prototypes defined the metre right up until 1960.
Events from the year 1840 in Germany
