BESSEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM

born July 22, 1784, Minden, Brandenburg [now in Germany] died March 17, 1846, Knigsberg, Prussia [now Kaliningrad, Russia] German astronomer whose measurements of positions for about 50,000 stars allowed the first accurate determination of interstellar distances; he was the first to measure the distance of a star other than the Sun. Additional reading Additional biographical information may be found in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. by Charles C. Gillispie, vol. 2, pp. 97102 (1970), and in works on astronomy, such as Henry S. Williams, The Great Astronomers (1930); and Agnes M. Clerke, A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century, 4th ed. rev. (1902).