Born Schöller near Elberfeld, (Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany), 5 May 1777
Died Bilk near Düsseldorf, (Germany), 7 June 1846
Johann Benzenberg, the codiscoverer of the upper-atmospheric (nontropospheric) location of meteors, later funded a private observatory at Bilk, which became an important center of minor-planet research. He was the son of Heinrich Benzenberg, a Protestant theologian (1744–1809), and Johanna Elisabeth (néeFues). In 1807, he married Charlotte Platzhoff (1789–1809) of Elberfeld. After studying theology (at Herborn and Marburg), Benzenberg went to Göttingen, where he developed a strong interest in science by attending the lectures of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Abraham Gotthelf Kästner. Following Lichtenberg’s death, Benzenberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Duisburg in 1800. In 1805, he became a professor of mathematics at the Lyzeum (women’s college) of Düsseldorf and the director of surveying for the Duchy of Berg. After immigrating to Switzerland...
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Selected References
Benzenberg, J. (1802). “De determinatione longitudinis per stellas transvolantes” (On the determination of longitude by shooting stars). Ph.D. thesis, Hamburg.
— (1804). Versuche über das Gesetz des Falls, über den Widerstand der Luft und über die Umdrehung der Erde. Dortmund. (The falling body experiments.)
— (1839). Die Sternschnuppen. Hamburg. (His up-to-date monograph, largely chronological, of the first four decades of meteor research. It was evidently intended as an homage to his deceased associate of 1798, H. W. Brandes.)
Benzenberg, J. and H. Brandes (1800). Versuche die Entfernung, die Geschwindigkeit und die Bahnen der Sternschnuppen zu bestimmen. Hamburg. (A tract documenting meteor observations at Göttingen.)
Bruhns (1875). “Benzenberg: Johann Friedrich.” In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Vol. 2, pp. 348–349. Leipzig: Dunker and Humblot.
Poggendorff, J. C. (1863). “Benzenberg.” In Biographisch-literarisches Handwörtenbuch. Vol. 1, col. 145. Leipzig: J. A. Barth.
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Kokott, W. (2014). Benzenberg, Johann Friedrich. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_136
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