MADLER, JOHANN HEINRICH VON

born May 29, 1794, Berlin, Prussia died March 14, 1874, Hanover, Ger. German astronomer who (with Wilhelm Beer) published the most complete map of the Moon of the time, Mappa Selenographica, 4 vol. (183436). It was the first lunar map to be divided into quadrants, and it remained unsurpassed in its detail until J.F. Julius Schmidt's map of 1878. The Mappa Selenographica was accompanied in 1837 by a volume providing micrometric measurements of the diameters of 148 craters and the elevations of 830 mountains on the Moon's surface. Beer and Mdler also collaborated in publishing in 1830 the first systematic chart of the surface features of the planet Mars. Graduating from a Gymnasium in 1817, Mdler taught in a seminary in Berlin. There he befriended Beer (17971850), a banker and amateur astronomer who owned a private observatory. In 1840, after the publication of the Mappa Selenographica, Mdler ended his partnership with Beer and accepted the directorship of the Dorpat Observatory. There, besides studying double stars, he turned to educating the public about astronomy through popular lectures, articles in newspapers and journals, and his Populre Astronomie (1841), which went through several editions.