S. Heinrich Schwabe (1789-1875)
Samuel Heinrich Schwabe wasborn on 25 October 1789 in Dessau, near Berlin. He began pharmaceuticalstudies in Berlin, in the course of which hebecame interested in astronomy and botany. He returned to Dessau in1812 to take over his family's pharmacy, while pursuing astronomical andbotanical researches asan amateur. His first telescope was won at a lottery in 1825, but thefollowing year he ordered a more powerful one through Fraunhofer. Becoming increasingly absorbed his astronomicalstudies, he sold the family business in 1829. Schwabe died in Dessauon 11 April 1875.
Schwabe observational work was aimed originallyat discovering possible intramercurialplanets. Starting on October 11 1825, he observed the Sun virtually every day that the weatherallowed, and did so continuouslyfor 42 years. In doing so he accumulated volumes of sunspot drawings, the ideabeing to detect his hypothetical planet as it passed across the solar disk,while avoiding confusion with small sunspots. In 1843 Schwabe still hadnot discovered any new planet, but instead his 17 years of nearly continuoussunspot observations revealed a 10-year periodicity in the number of sunspotsvisible on the solar disk. That same year Schwabe published this interesting result inthe Journal Astronomische Nachrichten, but it attracted little attentionuntil 1851 when his sunspot data was included byAlexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)in volume III of his monumental Kosmos.
Curiously,Schwabe's astronomical researches initiallywon him greater recognition in England thanin Germany. In February 1857 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the RoyalAstronomical Society, and in 1868 he was elected to the Royal Society.While Schwabe's fame as an astronomer rests chiefly on his discoveryof the sunspot cycle, he is also credited with the first description anddrawing, in 1831, of Jupiter's great red spot.
Bibliography:
Schwabe, S.H. 1843, Astronomische Nachrichten, 20, no. 495, 234-235.Erfurth, H. 1989, in Samuel Heinrich Schwabe: Apotheker, Astronom,Botaniker, Dessau: Museum fur Naturkunde und Vorgeschichte.