ARGELANDER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST German astronomer, was born at Memel on March 22, 1799, and studied at Konigsberg. His treatise on the path of the great comet of 181I appeared in 1822; he was, in 1823, made director of the observatory at Abo ; and he exchanged it for a similar charge at Helsingfors in 1832. His investigation of the sun's motion in space was published in 1837; and in the same year he was appointed professor of astronomy in the university of Bonn, where he died Feb. 17, 1875. He also published Obser vationes Astronomicae Aboae Factae (183o-32) ; DLX Stellarum Fixarum Positiones Mediae (183 5) ; and the first seven volumes of Astronomische Beobachtungen auf der Sternwarte zu Bonn (1846-69), containing his observations of northern and southern star-zones, and his great Durchmusterung (vols. iii.-v., 1859-62) of 324,198 stars, from the north pole to —2° Dec. The corre sponding atlas was issued in 1863. His observations (begun in 1838) and discussions of variable stars were embodied in vol. vii. of the same series.
See E. Schonfeld in Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesell schaft, x. pp. 150-178.