death_date birth_place nationality field birth_date known_for prizes article_title name
11 april 1875 dessau german astronomy 25 october 1789 sunspots gold medal of the royal astronomical society heinrich schwabe
 samuel heinrich schwabe
heinrich schwabe

samuel heinrich schwabe -lrb- 25 october 1789 -- 11 april 1875 -rrb- a german astronomer remembered for his work on sunspots .
schwabe was born at dessau .
at first an apothecary , he turned his attention to astronomy , and in 1826 commenced his observations on sunspots .
schwabe was trying to discover a new planet inside the orbit of mercury which was tentatively called vulcan .
because of the proximity to the sun , it would have been very difficult to observe vulcan , and schwabe believed one possibility to detect the planet might be to see it as a dark spot when passing in front of the sun .
for 17 years , from 1826 to 1843 , on every clear day , schwabe would scan the sun and record its spots trying to detect vulcan among them .
he did not find the planet but noticed the regular variation in the number of sunspots and published his findings in a short article entitled `` solar observations during 1843 '' .
in it he made the suggestion of a probable ten-year period -lrb- i.e. that at every tenth year the number of spots reached a maximum -rrb- .
this paper at first attracted little attention , but rudolf wolf who was at that time the director of bern observatory , was impressed so he began regular observations of sunspots .
schwabe 's observations were afterwards utilized in 1851 by alexander von humboldt in the third volume of his `` kosmos '' .
the periodicity of sunspots is now fully recognized ; and to schwabe is thus due the credit of one of the most important discoveries in astronomy .
in 1857 schwabe was awarded the gold medal of the royal astronomical society .
