Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve

Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (, trans. Vasily Yakovlevich Struve; 15 April 1793 – ) was a Baltic German astronomer and geodesist. He is best known for studying double stars and for initiating a triangulation survey later named Struve Geodetic Arc in his honor. Life He was born to the aristocratic Struve family at Altona, Duchy of Holstein (then a part of the Denmark–Norway kingdoms), the son of Jacob Struve (1755–1841). To avoid military service during the French occupation of Holstein, his family moved to the Russian Empire, equipped with Danish passports. In 1808 he entered the University of Tartu (Dorpat), where he first studied philology, but soon turned his attention to astronomy. From 1813 to 1820, he taught at the university and collected data at the Tartu Observatory, and in 1820 became a full professor and director of the observatory. His teachings have had a strong effect that is still felt at the university.