Bremiker, Carl

(b. Hagen, Germany, 23 February 1804; d. Berlin, Germany, 26 March 1877)

astronomy, geodesy.

After a long period as a geometer with the Rhine–Westphalian Land Survey, Bremiker went to the royal observatory in Berlin, where he served as a mathematician, an observer, and an editor of widely used astronomical and mathematical tables. At the suggestion of Friedrich Bessel, several observatories jointly published the Berliner academischen Sternkarten; and from 1841 to 1859 Bremiker observed and calculated the hours 6, 9, 13, 17, and 21 for these atlases. He astronomische Jahrbuch; and from 1850 to 1877 he edited the Nautische Jahrbuch.

In 1868 Bremiker was appointed Sektionschef in the Prussian Geodetic Institute. He became well known for his Logarithmisch–trigonometrische Handbuch (1856), which, by the advent of the calculating machine, had gone through forty editions. Easy to use and offering an accuracy never before attained, it served as an indispensable tool for generations of calculators. Bremiker’s tables, however, with centesimal arguments, were less popular.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Bremiker’s publications include Logarithmisch-trigonometrische Handbuch mit 7 Dezimalstellen(Berlin, 1856); Logarithmisch–trigonometrische Tafeln mit 6 Dezimalstellen (Berlin, 1862); Logarithmischtrigonometrische Tafeln mit 5 Dezimalstellen (Berlin, 1872); and Tafel vierstelliger Logarithmen (Berlin, 1874). Bremiker was also editor of the second edition of Crelle’s Rechentafeln (Berlin, 1864) and of the tenth and eleventh editions of Bode’s Anleitung zur Kenntnis des gestirnten Himmels (Berlin, 1844, 1858).

II. Secondary Literature. Further information can be found under Bremiker’s name in Neue deutsche Biographie, I, 582; Poggendorff, I and III; an obituary notice is L.A. Winnecke, in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, London, 38 (1878), 151.

Bernhard Sticker