Hermann Goldschmidt

Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt (June 17, 1802 – August 30 [1] or September 10 1866[2]) was a German-French astronomer and painter who spent much of his life in France.

He started out as a painter, but after attending a lecture by the famous French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier turned to astronomy.

By pure chance, Goldshmidt attended this lecture, which awakened his interest in astronomy and led him to pursue it as a career.

[6] Goldschmidt bought a telescope with the diameter of 23 lines (52 millimeters (2.0 in)) with the money he got from selling two portraits of Galileo he painted during a stay in Florence.

During this work he observed the same area several times and was able to detect variable stars and moving objects like planets.

During that period, the Academy of Science awarded Goldschmidt the astronomical prize medal several times, and he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1857.

[8] Goldschmidt combined his abilities as a painter with his love for astronomy as exemplified by his paintings of the Great Comet of 1858 and of the solar eclipse he observed in Spain July 1860.

The outer main-belt asteroid 1614 Goldschmidt, discovered by French astronomer Alfred Schmitt in 1952, was named in his memory.

[8] In 1869, a commemorative medal honoring the discovery of the 100th asteroid shows the profiles of John Russel Hind, Hermann Goldschmidt and Robert Luther.