Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve

Works

Struve's name is best known for his observations of double stars, which he carried on for many years. Although double stars had been studied earlier by William Herschel, John Herschel and Sir James South, Struve outdid any previous efforts. While at Dorpat, he obtained in 1824 a refracting telescope with an aperture of 23 cm (about 9 inches) made by Joseph von Fraunhofer, said to be a masterpiece of optical and mechanical quality. With this telescope, Struve discovered a very large number of double stars. In 1827, he published his double star catalogue Catalogus novus stellarum duplicium.

In 1853, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Family Struve was the second of a dynasty of astronomers through five generations: he was the father of Otto Wilhelm von Struve, the grandfather of Hermann von Struve (Otto Struve's uncle), and the great-grandfather of Otto Struve.

In 1815, he married Emilie Wall (1796–1834) in Altona, who bore twelve children, eight of whom survived early childhood. In addition to Otto Wilhelm von Struve, other children were Heinrich Wilhelm von Struve (1822–1908), a prominent chemist, and (1827–1889), who served as a government official in Siberia, and later as governor of Astrakhan and Perm.

After his first wife died, he remarried to Johanna Henriette Francisca Bartels (1807–1867), a daughter of the mathematician Martin Bartels, who bore him six more children. The most well-known was Karl von Struve (1835–1907), who served successively as Russian ambassador to Japan, the United States, and the Netherlands.

Bernhard Wilhelm's son Pyotr Struve (1870–1944) is probably the best-known member of the family in Russia proper (his other descendants mainly resided in Estonia and Latvia, and subsequently in Germany). He was one of the first Russian marxists and penned the manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party upon its creation in 1898. Even before the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Struve left it for the Constitutional Democratic party, which promoted ideas of liberalism. He represented this party at all the pre-revolutionary State Dumas. After the Russian Revolution, he published several striking articles on its causes and joined the White movement. He was one of the ministers in the governments of Pyotr Wrangel and Denikin. During the following three decades, Pyotr lived in Paris, while his children were prominent in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.