Born Island of Naissaar near Tallinn, (Estonia), 30 March 1879
Died Hamburg, Germany, 1 December 1935
German optician Bernhard Schmidt gave his name to a telescope type that permitted obtaining sharp images over a very wide field quickly. It involves a spherical primary mirror and a transparent corrector plate that largely removes the focus errors called coma and spherical aberration.
Schmidt was the first of five children of Karl Konstantin Schmidt and his wife, Maria Helene. His father was a writer, farmer, and fisherman on the island of Naissaar, in the Baltic Sea. Swedish was the language spoken on the island and in school, but at home the family spoke German. At the age of 15, Bernhard experimented with gunpowder and lost his right hand and forearm in an accident. This did not prove too much of a handicap, for later that year he built his own camera, photographed local people, and sold the pictures.
In 1895, Schmidt left Naissaar for Tallinn where he found work as a telegraph...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsSelected References
Hodges, P. C. (1948). “Bernhard Schmidt and His Reflector Camera: An Astronomical Contribution to Radiology. Paper I.” American Journal of Roentgenology and Radium Therapy 59: 122–131.
Marx, Sigfried and Werner Pfau (1992). Astrophotography with the Schmidt Telescope, translated by P. Lamble. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 54–65.
Schmidt, Bernhard (1932). “A Fast, Coma-free Reflecting System.” Zentral-Zeitung für Optik un Mechanik 1, no. 2: 62–63. (A translation of this article, and of Richard Schorr’s letter transmitting it to the journal, appears in Marx and Pfau, pp. 156–157.)
Schramm, Jochen (1996). Sterne über Hamburg: Die Geschichte der Astronomie in Hamburg. Hamburg: Kultur- und Geschichtskonto, pp. 209–220.
Wachmann, A. A. (1995). “From the Life of Bernhard Schmidt.” Sky & Telescope 15, no. 1: 4–9.
Williams, Thomas R. (1997). “Schmidt Telescopes.” In History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia, edited by John Lankford, pp. 445–447. New York: Garland.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Plicht, C.A. (2014). Schmidt, Bernhard Voldemar. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1237
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1237
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-9916-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-9917-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics