Wilhelm Olbers

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers was a German astronomer and practicing physician who discovered the asteroids Pallas in 1802 and Vesta in 1807, and who is best remembered today for the observation later called Olbers Paradox, described in 1823 and reformulated in 1826, that the darkness of the night sky is difficult to reconcile with the idea of an infinite, eternal, unchanging universe filled with stars. As a student he devised a convenient method for calculating the orbits of comets, considered the first satisfactory method of its kind, and he discovered a periodic comet, later named 13P slash Olbers, in 1815. Olbers studied medicine at Gottingen, where he also learned mathematics from Abraham Gotthelf Kastner, and practiced medicine in Bremen throughout his life while pursuing astronomy at night as a serious avocation. He took part in the celestial police, a group of astronomers organized in 1800 to search systematically for new solar system objects, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804, and served in the French legislative corps from 1812 to 1813 before his death in Bremen in 1840 at age eighty one.