Wilhelmine Witte (1777-1854)


            https://term.museum-digital.de/md-de/persinst/113924

JSON SKOS

Name (English): Wilhelmine Witte
Short name: Wilhelmine Witte
Year of birth: 1777
Year of death: 1854
Short Description: "Wilhelmine Sophie Elizabeth Witte (born Böttcher, 17 November 1777 - 17 September 1854) was a German amateur astronomer. Böttcher was born in 1777 in Hanover, as daughter of Johanne Sophie Marie, born Brinkmann (5 January 1755 - 25 November 1824) and of senator Gottfried Ernst Böttcher (16 February 1750 - 17 October 1823). She married privy councilor Friedrich Christian Witte (1773-1854) on 17 November 1797 and they had 14 children, among which Minna Witte and Friedrich Ernst Witte.

She was interested in Astronomy and bought her first telescope in 1815 (a Fraunhofer-Refrakter, the best telescope in the market at that time). She used this together with the existing maps (by Johann Heinrich von Mädler) of the moon's surface to develop a terrain model of the moon. Her globe, with a diameter of 34 centimeters, was presented by Mädler in 1839 in Bad Pyrmont at a congress and can be seen today at the Historisches Museum Hannover. One year before, she presented a draft version to the Astronomer John Herschel. In 1840, she presented the globe to scientists and members of the Prussian royal household. It was afterwards bought by the royal family. In 1844, Witte prepared a new version of the globe which was presented by Herschel to the Society for the Advancement of Science at Cambridge." - (en.wikipedia.org 05.12.2021)
Entity Encoding: piz

[Last update: 2021/12/05]