Born Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic), 15 April 1833
Died Paris, France, 15 October 1907
Paris Observatory director Maurice Löwy earned his reputation in celestial mechanics, particularly for his work on determining the orbital parameters of asteroids. He was born to a Jewish family, not, as is sometimes said, in Vienna but in Marienbad, at the time a city in the Austro–Hungarian Empire but now located in the Czech Republic not far from the German border. When Löwy was 8 years old, his family arrived in Vienna in order to avoid the endemic Jewish persecutions of the day.
In 1856, Löwy worked as an assistant at the Vienna Observatory, where his work on orbits of newly discovered minor planets drew considerable attention. Nevertheless, in the middle of the 19th century, the administration of the Austro–Hungarian Empire did not allow any Jewish‐born person to obtain a university teaching position without converting to Catholicism. Because Löwy refused to renounce, he could...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Selected References
Débarbat, Suzanne, Solange, Grillot, and jacques, Lévy (1984). Observatoire de Paris, son histoire 1667–1963. Paris : Observatoire de Paris (Second edition : 1990).
Löwy, Maurice (1884). Nouveau système de télescope, Paris: Crauthier–Villars.
——— (1886). Nouvelles méthodes pour la détermination complète de la refraction. Paris: Crautheir–Villars.
——— (1887). Détermination de la constante de l'aberration. Crauthier–Villars. Paris.
——— (1896–1899). Atlas photographique de la Lune, comprenant l'étude sur la topographie & la constitution de 1'écorce lunaire. Paris: Imprimerie nationale (Announcement in the Journal de physique, Vol. 5.)
——— (1906). “Découverte de mouvements propres d'étoiles à l'aide de la méthode stéréoscopique.” Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences 142: 1007–1008.
——— (1906). “Méthode nouvelle et rapide pour la détermination des erreurs de division d'un cercle méridien.” Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences 143 (1906): 529–535; 621–627; 719–726; 857–863.
Löwy, Maurice and Pierre Puiseux (1888). Théories nouvelles de l'Equatorial coudé & des Equatoriaux en general. Paris: Crautheir–Villars.
——— (1904). “Etudes des photographies lunaires.” Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences 139.
Poggendorff, J. C. (1898). “Loewy.” In Biographisch‐literarisches Handwörterbuch. Vol. 3, pp. 827–828. Leipzig: Barth.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Nitschelm, C. (2007). Löwy [Loewy], Maurice [Moritz]. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_870
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_870
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-31022-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30400-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics