- Carl Charlier
Carl Vilhelm Ludwig Charlier (
April 1 1862 –November 5 1934 ) was a Swedishastronomer .He received his Ph.D. from
Uppsala University in 1887, later worked there and at theStockholm Observatory and was Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory atLund University from 1897.He translated
Isaac Newton 's "Principia" into Swedish.He made extensive statistical studies of the stars in our galaxy and their positions and motions, and tried to develop a model of the galaxy based on this.
Related to his work on galactic structure, he also developed a cosmological theory based on the work of
Johann Heinrich Lambert . In the resulting Lambert-Charlier Hierarchical Cosmology, increasingly large areas of space contain decreasing densities of matter, the principle being introduced to avoid the observational inconsistency that would otherwise emerge from Olbers Paradox.*
James Craig Watson Medal (1924)
*Bruce Medal (1933)Named after him
*Charlier crater on theMoon
*Crater on Mars
*Asteroid 8677 Charlier
*Charlier polynomials External links
* [http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Charlier/index.html Bruce Medal page]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/PASP./0045//0000005.000.html Awarding of Bruce Medal: PASP 45 (1933) 5]
* [http://www.astro.uu.se/history/swehistory_1860-1940.html Gustav Holmberg: Astronomy in Sweden 1860-1940]Obituaries
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0095//0000339.000.html MNRAS 95 (1935) 339]
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