Franz Brünnow

Who was Franz Brünnow?

Franz Friedrich Ernst Brünnow was a German astronomer.

He was born in Berlin, and attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm gymnasium. In 1839 he entered the University of Berlin, where he studied mathematics, astronomy and physics, as well as chemistry, philosophy and philology. After graduating as Ph.D. in 1842 he took an active part in astronomical work at the Berlin Observatory, under the direction of Johann Franz Encke, contributing numerous important papers on the orbits of comets and minor planets to the Astronomische Nachrichten.

He was the first foreigner to become director of an American observatory, serving as director of Detroit Observatory from 1854 to 1863. He played a major role in establishing the study of astronomy in the United States at a time when the only other serious faculty was run by Benjamin Peirce at Harvard University. He introduced the teaching of rigorous German analytical methods and trained a number of students who went on to further American astronomy, including Asaph Hall and James Craig Watson. In addition, Charles Augustus Young learned German astronomical methods from Brünnow although he did not attend the University of Michigan.