Johann von Lamont

Born on 13 December 1805 in Braemar, Scotland, John Lamont (later Johann von Lamont) was an astronomer and pioneer in geomagnetism. After his father died, Lamont was sent at the age of 12 to a Scottish monastery in Regensburg, Germany. Having developed an interest in astronomy, he was appointed in 1828 as an assistant at the Bogenhausen observatory near Munich, where he would work for the next 51 years. Lamont studied astronomy at the University of Munich and earned his PhD in 1830. After becoming the observatory’s director in 1835, Lamont initiated regular geomagnetic observations in Munich and would later develop his own theodolite for measuring magnetic field orientation and intensity. He produced 45 of the instruments in a workshop in his home at the observatory, and he sold them to observatories all over the world. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Lamont expanded his geomagnetic observations to cover much of western Europe. He discovered that the strength of Earth’s magnetic field varies over periods of about 10 years, a phenomenon that eventually was linked to the solar cycle. Lamont was almost 50 years old before he took on regular teaching duties in 1852 as a professor of astronomy at the University of Munich. Among his many accomplishments, Lamont calculated orbits for moons of Uranus and Saturn, calculated the mass of Uranus from observations of its moons, and made two observations of Neptune. He also undertook the ambitious task of compiling a star catalog containing more than 34 000 entries. Lamont joined a large number of academies and scientific societies, including the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Academies of Brussels, Upsala, and Prague. Never having married, Lamont left his wealth to fund science scholarships after his death in 1879. In recognition of Lamont’s contributions to astronomy, craters on both the Moon and Mars bear his name.

Date in History: 13 December 1805