Johann von Lamont

Johann von Lamont (1805 to 1879), born John Lamont at Corriemulzie near Inverey in Aberdeenshire, was a Scottish-German astronomer and physicist. After his father died in 1817 he was sent to the Scots Benedictine College at Regensburg in Germany. He took up astronomy at the Bogenhausen Observatory near Munich, took his doctorate in 1830, became the observatory's director in 1835 and in 1852 professor of astronomy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. At the observatory he compiled a star catalogue of about 35,000 entries and calculated the orbits of the moons of Uranus and Saturn, obtaining the first value for the mass of Uranus. He observed Neptune in 1845 and twice in 1846 without recognising it as a planet. His most important work concerned the magnetism of the Earth: he made magnetic surveys across Europe and found a ten-year magnetic cycle roughly matching the sunspot cycle. He died unmarried in Munich and left his wealth to found scholarships in the sciences.