Wolf, (Johann) Rudolf (1816–1893)
Swiss astronomer who, following the discovery of the sunspot
cycle by Heinrich Schwabe, amassed all
available data on sunspot activity back as far as 1610 and calculated a
period for the cycle of 11.1 years. He also co-discovered the link between
the cycle and geomagnetic activity on Earth. In 1848 he devised a way of
quantifying sunspot activity (see relative
sunspot number). Wolf studied at the universities of Zurich, Vienna,
and Berlin. He became professor of astronomy at the University of Bern in
1844 and director of the Bern Observatory in 1847. In 1855 he accepted a
chair of astronomy at both the University of Zürich and the Federal Institute
of Technology in Zürich.
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• ASTRONOMERS
AND ASTROPHYSICISTS
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