RÜMKER, Karl Ludwig Christian (1788-1862)

(his name is in this form in the German dictionary of biography, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, but variations of it appear in Australian records [often known as Charles Rümker or Charles Rumker—Ed.])

astronomer

was born at New Brandenburg, Germany, on 28 May 1788. He entered the East India Company's service and obtained a good knowledge of English and also took up the study of astronomy. He obtained a position at the navigation school and observatory at Hamburg in 1817, and in 1821 was engaged by Sir Thomas Brisbane (q.v.) as a scientific assistant, and went with him to Sydney. James Dunlop (q.v.) was the second assistant and both men worked under Brisbane at the private observatory established at Parramatta. Rümker was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Astronomical Society together with £100, for his re-discovery of Encke's comet in 1822 and also received the gold medal of the Institute of France. In June 1823 having fallen out with Brisbane he left the observatory. He had been granted 1000 acres of land on the west side of the Nepean River on the assurance that he would devote his time to scientific pursuits. Brisbane in a dispatch to Earl Bathurst in November 1823 requested that the grant should not be confirmed beyond 300 acres because Rümker had "completely broken" his promise. (H.R. of A., ser. I, vol. XI, p. 154). Bathurst, however, refused Brisbane's request (ibid. p. 305), realizing that this would be a case of one man's word against another's if it were further investigated. After Brisbane's departure Rümker was placed in charge of the observatory by the government in May 1826, and it was intended that he should measure the arc of the meridian. It was not, however, possible for him to have done much work on this. It would have been necessary to obtain instruments from London and he left the colony about the end of 1828. He was in England for some time but in 1831 was appointed director of the navigation school and observatory at Hamburg, where he did important work before his retirement in 1857. He was given the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1854 for his extensive observations, chiefly of comets, and for his catalogue of 12,000 stars. He died at Lisbon on 21 December 1862. He was an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society, London, and communicated 88 papers to it. The results of his observations at Parramatta were published in Part III of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1829 and in the Royal Astronomical Society's Memoirs, Vol. III. Rümker also contributed an article to the Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales, edited by Barron Field (q.v.), the first collection of scientific papers published in Australia.

H. C. Russell, Report of the First Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889, p. 59; J. Service, Thir Notandums, p. 138 et. seq.; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 29; Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vols. XI to XV.