Christfried Kirch

Christfried Kirch, who lived from 1694 to 1740, was an astronomer and almanac publisher from the Kingdom of Prussia, born in Guben, Germany, the son of the astronomers Gottfried Kirch and Maria Margaretha Kirch. He took part in his father's solar observations at the age of twelve and began his own astronomical studies in Leipzig and Danzig. From 1716 until his death he was, like his father, Director of the Berlin Observatory, despite repeated requests from the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, and in 1717 he received his father's former post at the Prussian Society of Sciences, where he later became responsible for the library. In continuing his father's almanac calculations he was aided by his mother and his younger sister. He described the comet of 1718, sunspots, the surface of Venus and Jupiter, occultations of the moons of Jupiter, variable stars, the northern lights and the Earth's magnetic field, and in 1730 published his greatest work, Observationes astronomicae selectiores.