HANSTEEN, Christopher (1784-1873), astronomer and physicist, was born at Christiania, Norway, September 26, 1784. From the cathedral school he went to the university at Copenhagen, where first law and afterwards mathematics formed his main study. In 1806 he taught mathematics in the gymnasium of Frederiksborg, Zeeland, and the following year he commenced the inquiries in his f ιvoαrite branch of science—terrestrial magnetism—which have made his name famous. He took in 1812 the prize of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences for his reply to a question on the magnetic axes. Appointed lecturer in 1814, he was in 1816 raised to the chair of astronomy and applied mathematics in the university of Christiania. In 1819 he published his researches on terrestrial magnetism, a work which attracted the notice of the physicists of Europe and particularly of England, where the search for a formula by which the variation of the needle might be found at any given time and place was being actively pursued. The researches were translated into German by P. T. Hanson, under the title Untersuchungen über den Magnetismus der Erde, with a supplement containing Beobachtungen der Abweichung und Neigung der Magnetnadeln and an atlas. The rules there framed for the observation of magnetical phenomena have been generally followed. Hansteen hoped by them to accumulate analyses for determining the number and position of the magnetic poles of the earth. In prosecution of his researches he visited London, and also Paris and other Continental cities, and travelled over Finland and the greater part of his own country; and in 1828-30 he undertook, in company with Ermann and Due, and with the cooperation of Russia, a Government mission to Western Siberia, the chief aim of which was to find the ideal ...