Astronomers in the chair

from documents such as his official hiring on 3 July 1772 or the 1826 description and inventory of the Berlin Observatory. Readers can page through the volume to identify topics of interest by chapter. For example, public enthusiasm surrounding the discoveries of Uranus (1781) and Ceres (1801) is treated, as is the development, since 1789, of large, precision-calibrated circles that led by 1800 to the introduction of the meridian circle as the primary instrument for astronomical observatories. It should be noted, however, that the two-foot instrument Bode acquired in 1805 from the London workshop of Edward Troughton was not a meridian circle (although Bode called it such) but rather an alt-azimuth circle (pp. 101, 273). Drawing on recent research on Gottfried Kirch, the first astronomer of the Berlin Academy, Schwemin clarifies the relation between Bode and Kirch’s daughter Christina. Bode married, one after the other, two granddaughters of Theodora Kirch, the step-sister of Christina (p. 223). Thus, there were no direct blood ties between Christina Kirch and Bode. The chapter on “Students and Sponsored” (pp. 229–45) is very revealing for history of science. Schwemin finds Bode supporting 21 persons in various relationships. He also frequently met travelers (pp. 246–50) and auditors in his lectures (pp. 250–68). It is also stimulating to read, in the excerpts from Bode’s correspondence, how he expressed himself “on general social and political conditions, his personal circles and his correspondents” (p. 352). Schwemin quotes from 42 letters, dating from 1779 to 1826 (pp. 352–77), identifying a total of 20 correspondents (pp. 324–26). A name index (pp. 393–407) enables all persons to be quickly identified. This Bode biography, with its many chronologically arranged sources and lists of documents, is not a usual biography. It is rather an outstanding and nearly exhaustive source volume for the life and work of Johann Elert Bode and as such stimulates new research questions. This book will interest not only historians of astronomy and laity interested in the history of astronomy but also scholars of the Enlightenment, for astronomers around 1800 saw their work as “an essential part of the European Enlightenment” (p. 13). For this reason it is quite appropriate for this richly illustrated volume to appear in the series Berliner Klassik. Eine Großstadtkultur um 1800.