Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north.
Chișinău is the capital and largest city of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial centre, and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc, a tributary of the Dniester. According to the results of the 2014 census, the city proper had a population of 532,513, while the population of the Municipality of Chișinău was 700,000. Chișinău is the most economically prosperous locality in Moldova and its largest transportation hub. Nearly a third of Moldova's population lives in the metro area.
Otto Wilhelm von Struve was a Russian astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is normally given as Otto Vasil'evich Struve. He headed the Pulkovo Observatory between 1862 and 1889 and was a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, officially named the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo, is the principal astronomical observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is located 19 km south of Saint Petersburg on Pulkovo Heights 75 metres (246 ft) above sea level. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments. It was formerly known as the Imperial Observatory at Pulkowo.
Spiru C. Haret was a Romanian mathematician, astronomer, and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by introducing the concept of secular perturbations in relation to this.
Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov was a Soviet optical engineer and amateur astronomer. He is best known as the inventor of the Maksutov telescope.
Sarata is a rural settlement in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Raion, Odesa Oblast (region) of south-western Ukraine. It is a part of the Bessarabian historic district of Budjak. Sarata hosts the administration of Sarata settlement hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 4,159.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium has been situated in the Uccle municipality of Brussels since 1890.
Baron Emanuel A. von der Pahlen was a German astronomer.
Ion Inculeț was a Bessarabian and Romanian politician, the President of the Country Council of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, Minister of the Interior of Romania, full member of the Romanian Academy.
Dubăsarii Vechi is a village in Criuleni District, Moldova.
Vasile Vasilievici Stroescu, also known as Vasile de Stroesco, Basile Stroesco, or Vasile Stroiescu, was a Bessarabian and Romanian politician, landowner, and philanthropist. One of the proponents and sponsors of Romanian nationalism in Russia's Bessarabia Governorate, as well as among the Romanian communities of Austria-Hungary, he was also a champion of self-help and of cooperative farming. He inherited or purchased large estates, progressively dividing them among local peasants, while setting up local schools and churches for their use. An erudite and traveler, he abandoned his career in law to focus on his agricultural projects and cultural activism. For the latter work, he became an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.
Gherman Vasile Pântea was a Bessarabian-born soldier, civil servant and political figure, active in the Russian Empire and Romania. As an officer of the Imperial Russian Army during most of World War I, he helped organize the committees of Bessarabian soldiers, oscillating between loyalty to the Russian Provisional Government and the cause of Bessarabian emancipation. Pântea was subsequently Military Director of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, answering to President Ion Inculeț. He personally created a Bessarabian defense force, tasked with combating Bolshevik subversion and Russian intimidation, but also braced for defeat after the October Revolution.
Andrei Găină was a deputy in the first Parliament of Bessarabia "Sfatul Țării" in the years 1917-1918, voting the Union of Bessarabia with Romania.
The Moldavian Progressive Party was a short-lived political organization advancing the political interests of Romanians and "Moldavians". It nominally represented the region of Bessarabia, but was primarily active in Odesa, in the Russian Provisional Government's Kherson Governorate. Its core constituency was a large group of Romanian-speaking soldiers in the Russian Army; it was also closely aligned with the older National Moldavian Party (PNM) of Chișinău, though it advanced some left-wing policies that were entirely its own.
Nikolay Florea (Floria) (October 19, 1912, Odessa – October 1941, Vyazma) was a Soviet astronomer of mixed Romanian and Russian origin.
Matei Donici was a Romanian poet, Imperial Russian Army general, and politician from Bessarabia. He was born at a time when his native region, as the eastern half of Moldavia, had been taken over by the Russian Empire and organized into a Bessarabia Governorate; his family belonged to Moldavian boyardom, having managed to preserve its estates. Though seeking and obtaining integration within the Russian nobility, the Donicis secretly cultivated Romanian nationalism, which shaped Matei's own outlook on politics. In the late 1860s, after flunking out of the Russian education system, he spent some time in Odesa and at his Bessarabian manor, composing poetry which spoke of Moldovans as a subset of the Romanians, and which included an all-out critique of Tsarist autocracy.
Maria Teohari is credited as the first female astronomer of Romania. She lost part of her eyesight from viewing the Sun through telescopes without adequate eye protection.
The Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy was created in 1990 with the union of three astronomical observatories: the Bucharest Astronomical Observatory, the Cluj Observatory and the Timișoara Observatory.
Georg Thomas Sabler was an astronomer and geodesist of Baltic German origin active in territories of modern-day Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia.
