Friedrich W. Bessel: The Man Who Dared to Measure

Abstract

Measurement is at the heart of science. It enables us to distinguish between a yard and a mile say, a minute and a year, a gram and a ton. Some measurements don’t count for much, but others can mean the difference between life and death. On another level, measurement enables humans to have a sense of perspective. We are quite enormous in comparison to an ant, for example, but decidedly tiny in comparison to a star. There is a soulful longing within our kind to know, through measurement, where we ‘fit’ in the scheme of things, wistful desires that have given birth to the global civilization we enjoy today.