STRUVE, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm (1793-1864), astronomer, was born at Altona on April 15, 1793. In 1808 he entered the university of Dorpat, where he first studied philology, but soon turned his attention to astronomy. In 1813 he was appointed observer in the new university observatory and a few years later professor of astronomy. He remained in Dorpat, occupied with researches on double stars and in geodetic work, till 1839, when he removed to Pulkova, near St Petersburg, as director of the new Central Observatory. Here he continued his activity until he was obliged to retire (in 1861) owing to failing health. He died at St Petersburg on November 23, 1864. Struve’s name is best known by bis observations of double stars, which he carried on for many years. These bodies had first been regularly measured by W. Herschel, who discovered that many of them formed systems of two stars revolving round their common centre of gravity. After him J. Herschel (and for some time South) had observed them, but their labours were eclipsed by the systematic and more extensive ones of Struve. With the 9½-inch refractor at Dorpat he discovered a great number of double stars, and published in 1827 a list of all the known objects of this kind (Catalogus Novus Stellarum Duplicium}. His micrometric measurements of 2714 double stars were made from 1824 to 1837, and are contained in his principal work Stellarum Duplicium et-Multiplicium Mensurae Micrometricae (St Petersburg, 1837, fol.; a convenient summary of the results is given in vol. i. of the Dunecht Observatory Publications, 1876). The places of the objects were at the same time determined with the Dorpat meridian circle {Stellarum Firarum Imprimis Duplicium et Multiplicium Positiones Mediae, St Petersburg, 1852, fol.). At Pulkova he ...