Life
He was born in Länghem, in Västergötland, Sweden and graduated from Uppsala University in 1872. After getting his doctorate in 1875, he emigrated to Russia in 1876. He worked at Dorpat Observatory, in today's Tartu, Estonia, and then in 1879 worked at Pulkovo Observatory, becoming director of the observatory from 1895 until his death.
He specialized in celestial mechanics, and notably worked on calculating the orbit of Comet Encke, taking into account the perturbations of various planets. He used observations of Comet Encke to try estimate the mass of Mercury. Russian sources sometimes referred to the comet as Comet Encke-Backlund. He also carried out geodesic studies in Spitsbergen from 1898 to 1900. He became a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1883, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1897 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1911. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914.
Read more about this topic: Oskar Backlund
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“A man in public life expects to be sneered at—it is the fault of his elevated sitiwation, and not of himself.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)