BornMinsk (Belarus), 28 October 1880
DiedMeseritz (Miedzyrzecz, Poland), 26 March 1940
Wilhelm Anderson was a Baltic–German–Estonian astronomer working as Privatdozent at the University of Tartu, Estonia, whose calculations anticipated the existence of a maximum mass for white dwarfs, now known as the Chandrasekhar limit.
Wilhelm Anderson was born in Minsk where his father, Nikolai Anderson (6 October 1845, Viru-Jaagupi, Estonia, to 22 March 1905, Narva-Jõesuu, Estonia), was a high school teacher. His mother was Adele Anderson, born Vogt. In 1894, Nikolai Anderson was elected as professor of the University of Kazan, Russia, in Finno-Ugric languages, and the family moved there. Wilhelm graduated from the III Gymnasium of Kazan and then studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the University of Kazan from 1902 to 1909. He graduated with a second-grade diploma and from 1910 to 1918 worked in Samara, Russia, teaching mathematics, physics, and cosmography in different gymnasiums. From...
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Selected References
Blackman, Eric. “Giants of physics found white-dwarf mass limits.” Nature 440 (9 March 2006):148.
Israel, Werner. “Imploding stars, shifting continents, and the inconstancy of matter.” Foundation of Physics 26 (1996): 595–616.
Nauenberg, Michael. “Edmund C. Stoner and the discovery of the maximum mass of white dwarfs.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 39, Part 3 (2008): 297–312.
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Kuusk, P. (2014). Anderson, Wilhelm Robert Karl. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_9218
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