Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) 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. A special type of mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessel's death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli and then generalised by Bessel.
Born |
22 July 1784 Minden, Minden-Ravensberg, now Germany
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Died |
17 March 1846 (aged 61) Königsberg, Prussia (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia)
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Zodiac | Cancer |
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