Gottfried Heinsius
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gottfried Heinsius (April, 1709 – May 21, 1769) was a German mathematician, geographer and astronomer.[1]
He was born near Naumburg and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1733 from the University of Leipzig the in the Electorate of Saxony, with a dissertation on De viribus motricibus.[2] Later he became professor of mathematics at the same institution. Professor Heinsius may have been the first to publish an announcement about the return of Halley's Comet in 1759.[3] From 1736–1743 he taught in St. Petersburg with Leonhard Euler and was a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.[4] While in Russia, he was given the task to provide the Russian Tsar Ivan VI with a horoscope.[4] He died in Leipzig. The crater Heinsius on the Moon is named after him.
