Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr

Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, who lived from 1677 to 1750, was a German mathematician, astronomer and cartographer born in Nuremberg, the son of a merchant. He studied at the Aegidien-Gymnasium in Nuremberg, the University of Altdorf and the University of Halle, graduating in 1698 with a dissertation on the Sun, and then spent two years travelling in Germany, Holland and England, where he learned to grind and figure his own telescope lenses. From 1704 until his death he was professor of mathematics at the Aegidien-Gymnasium. He is not noted for any discoveries but published on sundials, spherical trigonometry, and celestial maps and globes, and with the cartographer Johann Batist Homann he prepared the astronomical plates collected in 1742 as the Atlas Coelestis. He belonged to several scientific societies, among them the Berlin Academy, the Royal Society from 1733 and the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1740, and a lunar crater and the minor planet 12622 Doppelmayr are named in his honour.