August Ferdinand Möbius

August Ferdinand Möbius was a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer, born in Schulpforta in the Electorate of Saxony on 17 November 1790 and descended on his mother's side from the religious reformer Martin Luther. Home schooled until he was thirteen, he attended the college at Schulpforta from 1803 and graduated in 1809, then enrolled at the University of Leipzig, where he studied astronomy under Karl Mollweide. In 1813 he began to study astronomy under Carl Friedrich Gauss at the University of Göttingen, and then went to Johann Pfaff at the University of Halle, where he completed his doctoral thesis on the occultation of fixed stars in 1815. In 1816 he was appointed extraordinary professor of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig, and he died in Leipzig in 1868 at the age of 77.