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1862, and he had much difficulty in completing his course of lectures. In the autumn of this year he went again to the Rhine, but only to stay in a country-house near Bonn, the home of his son-in-law, Professor Busch. Here his health appeared to revive, and he returned to Berlin feeling so much better that he commenced his winter lectures; a fortnight before Christmas, however, he was obliged to give them up, never again to be resumed. In the spring of 1863 he retired to a country-house at Schöneberg, near Berlin, and here, on the morning of the 28th of August, his valuable life was closed by a painless death. His name will ever be cherished in the annals of that science which he had so greatly enriched. Few philosophers have ever united such a versatility of genius with a mind so severely disciplined, or who, possessing such a talent for observing, were able to deduce such important results from their observations.

He was member of probably every Academy in Europe. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1828; the Royal Medal was awarded to him in 1829, "for his Discoveries relating to the Laws of Crystallization, and the Properties of Crystals."

In 1852 he was elected Foreign Associate of the French Institute, in the place of Ersted.

The greater part of the preceding notice is extracted from an Address to the German Geological Society by Professor G. Rose, Mitscherlich's successor as President of the Society.

CARL LUDWIG CHRISTIAN RÜMKER was born on the 28th of May 1788, at Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, in the service of which State his father held an important position. After a careful preparatory education at home, he was sent to the Graue Kloster at Berlin, and later to the Engineering Academy of that place. In 1807 he passed the Government examination for qualification as an engineer and architect.

In consequence of the gloomy aspect of affairs in Prussia after the peace of Tilsit, he endeavoured to establish himself in Hamburg; but here also, finding no prospect of occupation in the profession he had adopted, he resolved in 1808 to go to England with the intention of devoting himself to a seafaring life. Accordingly, in the 21st year of his age, he began the world anew, under the most unfavourable circumstances, in a strange country, without friends, and entirely cut off from his home by the continental blockade. With an energy and strength of character peculiarly his own, he overcame the difficulties of his situation, and obtained an appointment as Midshipman in the Navy of the East India Company. Feeling dissatisfied with this service, he entered into that of the German house of Rücken in London, and visited many parts of the world in their ships. In 1811 or 1812 he obtained admission into the Royal Navy, and served during the latter part of the war on board various ships of the Mediterranean fleet. He was first appointed to the 'Benbow'; afterwards he became Naval Instructor on board the 'Montague,' Captain Peter Heywood (formerly of the

Bounty'), of whom he used to speak in terms of the greatest regard, as the most kind-hearted and excellent man he had ever known. He was then transferred to the 'Albion,' and on his passage out from England to join Sir Charles Penrose, fought at the battle of Algiers.

During a visit to Genoa Rümker became acquainted with the Baron v. Zach, to whom he submitted the results of various astronomical observations in order to obtain his opinion of their value. The Baron soon discovered his talent for astronomy, encouraged him to cultivate that science, and aided him with his advice and the use of his astronomical library. Rümker's first observations, occultations, and the determination of the latitude and longitude of Malta, where he was stationed for a considerable time, were published in v. Zach's 'Correspondance Astronomique.'

In 1817, when the Fleet returned to England, he quitted the Naval Service and went to Hamburg, carrying with him the friendship and esteem of his comrades of all ranks, which he had won by his ability and energy, combined with a peculiar suavity of manner. Here he was appointed Principal of the School of Navigation. In the society of Schumacher, the Director of the Observatory of Altona, Repsold, and Woltmann, his taste for astronomy was strengthened, and he found many opportunities of extending his knowledge of the subject. As at that time Hamburg did not possess an Observatory, he built one at his own expense on the Stintfang.

In 1821 he resigned his post at the School of Navigation in order to accompany Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales, to whom he had been introduced by Captain Heywood, and to take charge of the Observatory which Sir Thomas purposed founding in that colony.

Rümker's labours in the Observatory of Paramatta are well known to astronomers. In 1822 he observed the first calculated reappearance of Encke's comet, which was invisible in Europe, and thereby first confirmed the shortness of its periodic time. He afterwards observed and discovered many other comets, some of which were not seen in Europe. He observed the sun in the solstices, made many observations with Kater's pendulum, and determined the magnetic declination and inclination. These and other observations were published in a separate volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1830. His observations of the stars of the southern hemisphere are in part contained in the 'Brisbane Catalogue,' and in the 'Preliminary Catalogue of Fixed Stars in the Southern Hemisphere,' published by himself at Hamburg in 1832. In after years, however, he was never able to find leisure for continuing the work, and the greater part of the observations remain still unpublished.

In 1829 he returned to Europe to resume his post as Principal of the School of Navigation, and to undertake the Direction of the New Observatory built by the Senate of Hamburg. He devoted himself with the most unwearied diligence to the duties of these two offices. After nights passed in observing, he made his appearance at the School of Navigation at

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eight both in summer and winter, and remained there teaching for five and even seven hours, regardless of his failing health, which was unable to sustain so severe a trial.

Under his care the school attained an unexpected prosperity. It produced the most distinguished sailors of the German merchant navy, and the teachers of almost all the Schools of Navigation on the coast of the North Sea have been his pupils. The number of students, which at the time of his appointment to the school was only 60, amounted to 250 in 1857. He possessed in an unusual degree the art of teaching. By the clearness of his methods, and a singular patience and mildness which encouraged the self-respect of his pupils and gained their confidence, and especially by his power of adapting his teaching to the comprehension of each individual, he succeeded in preparing the most uncultivated sailor for the examination in navigation often in a surprisingly short time, so as to enable him to pass it with credit.

His Handbook of Navigation,' which appeared in 1843, and has gone through three large editions, is used as a text-book in most of the Schools of Navigation on the shores of the North Sea, in Austria, and in Russia.

He devoted himself with equal or even still greater energy to his duties in the Observatory. The principal instruments consisted of an equatorially mounted refractor of 5-feet focal length by Fraunhofer, and a meridian circle constructed by the brothers Repsold, which was mounted in 1836. The observations made with the refractor are published in Schumacher's 'Astronomische Nachrichten,' and in the Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society. With the meridian-circle he undertook the determination of the places of all the fixed stars visible through its telescope,—a work of many years' duration, the results of which he published in the years 1843-59 under the title of a Catalogue of 12,000 fixed stars, but in reality containing upwards of 15,000.

In speaking of the observations made with the refractor, at the Anniversary Meeting of the Astronomical Society in 1854, when the medal of the Society was awarded to M. Rümker, the Astronomer Royal, President of the Society, expressed himself in the following terms:

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For a very long time M. Rümker has been known as furnishing extrameridional observations of comets and newly discovered planets, possessing the highest degree of accuracy, and extending to times when the objects which he could successfully observe were lost to other astronomers furnished apparently with much more powerful means. I have myself visited the observatory and inspected the instruments which have been devoted to these observations, and I have inquired, How is it that with instruments so insignificant you have been able to see so much more than others could see who are so much better equipped? The answer was very simple. Energy, care, patience,in these, I believe, is contained the whole secret. M. Rümker perhaps possesses in perfection the sensibility of eye and the acuteness of ear which are required for the most delicate observations; but

these powers, which might seem at first to be original gifts of nature, have, I do not doubt, acquired very much of their activity from their careful and energetic use."

Adverting to the Catalogue of fixed stars, for which more especially the medal was bestowed, Mr. Airy observes,

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"Had this Catalogue proceeded from an observatory of which the personal establishment was charged with no other labours, we should have considered it as a highly meritorious work. . . . . What, then, shall we say to this work in the circumstances under which it has reached us? It has come, the voluntary enterprise of an individual, who could not, by any construction of his connexion with the Hamburgh Observatory, be supposed to owe to the world a hundredth part of the labour which it has cost. is the fruit of observations made in the watches of the night, and calculations made in the leisure hours of the day, by a person who would seem, to vulgar eyes, to be engrossed to the limits of human endurance by an onerous professional office. Well may we consider it as a remarkable instance of voluntary labour, undertaken under difficult circumstances, not for public display, but as an aid to science, and skilfully and steadily directed to that purpose alone."

M. Rümker was a Member of the Royal Academies of Münich and Göttingen, the Batavian Society of Rotterdam, the Royal Astronomical and many other English and Foreign learned Societies. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1855.

After having laboured long and profitably, repeated attacks of illness, accompanied by an asthmatic cough which increased in severity at each relapse, forced him at length (in 1857) to rest from his labours, and to seek a milder climate for the benefit of his shattered health.

At his suggestion the care of the Navigation School was entrusted to M. Niebour, who had been his assistant for many years, and that of the Observatory to his only son, George Rümker, at that time the Astronomer of the Durham Observatory, and now his successor as Director of the Observatory of Hamburg.

He had visited and been pleased with Lisbon during his earlier voyages, and was induced to select that place for his retreat. There, after a residence of six years, tenderly watched over by his wife, a lady of English birth, and the discoverer of the comet VI of 1847, retaining full possession of his faculties, he died on the 21st of December 1862.

Having served in the British Navy, and received the medal given to those who shared in the battle of Algiers, he was followed to the grave by officers of the British fleet in the Tagus, and by his German friends. He lies buried in a spot chosen by himself, close to Fielding's grave in the cemetery of the church of Estrella.

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