Talk:Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel/Archive 1

Neptune
Bessel also contributed to the discovery of Neptune. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.158.10 (talk) 15:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC) His work on Neptune was in 1840. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.169.202.217 (talk) 14:39, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * With a verifiable reference, this would make a good addition to the article. Now the end of the article mysteriously mentions that Neptune was discovered shortly after his death without any indication of how that is significant to his biography. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:03, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The year is said to be 1837 in the site http://messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/bessel.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.203.64 (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * See page 25 of "Le Verrier - Magnificent and Detestable Astronomer", by J. Lequeux, in 2013. I agree that we need more detail about the lecture or paper of 1840. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.176.33 (talk) 13:44, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Education-teaching
The article says Bessel lacked a university education. The info-box associates him with universities, with Gauss, and with a doctoral student. Which is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.240.30 (talk) 02:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Says here he attended a University, http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/periodictable/html/Bk.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.41.56.73 (talk) 20:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As a professor. It also says he lacked a university education. Obviously he had the knowledge involved, but he didn't get it at the university.  He must have picked it up from books or maybe a mentor or both.  A discussion of how he acquired his university-level skills would certainly fill a gap in the article. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:07, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Bessel's correction
The article on standard deviation refers to Bessel's correction, which attributes to Friedrich Bessel. There's no mention of it in this article, however, nor any other involvement in statistics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.98.251.200 (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Info Box
Sorry, but the Info-Box is erroneous. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel left school as a 14-year old boy. At a later time he never got any education at school or university or any other educational institution. He was an autodidact. So, he never joined the university of Göttingen or Berlin (the latter started with lesson in october 1810, when Bessel had already begun his teaching job in Königsberg).

Of course, Bessel had no doctoral adviser for his non-written master or doctor thesis. He didn't hold any regular doctor degree. Yet being full professor at Königsberg University he was awarded a "Doctor honoris causa" arranged by Carl Friedrich Gauss, but that's no doctoral advice.

Heinrich Scherk had been one of Bessel's doctoral students, but I think the most famous one was Argelander.

Bessel's main field of research was astronomy, then geodesy, physics and mathematics. --217.87.12.89 (talk) 17:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, Bessel didn't need any academic advisor. Gauss was a friend of him but no advisor. --Dioskorides (talk) 18:00, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

More text in lead
The lead for this article was comparatively thin compared to most other articles I've encountered on similarly accomplished and recognized scientists. I personally think the lead should stand on its own without expecting a casual reader to parse the infobox, so I allowed some small duplications.

I see in the post above that his doctorate was in some sense an honorary degree, but another biographical article I just skimmed through suggest it was entirely warranted by a doctoral level research result he had independently obtained. In this case it seems more likely that the degree was honorary in the sense that he side-stepped the formality of attendance rather than any measure of competence. By Gresham's law, these institutions can't very well partition their honorary degrees into those fully merited and those otherwise. Thus, lacking additional context, the word "honorary" can only be parsed to mean "not through the usual treading in the groove". &mdash; MaxEnt 17:10, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Johann Jacob Baeyer
Johann Jacob Baeyer has an article in the German WP because if his role in the geodesics in East Prussia with Bessel. There is not even a stub in English ? 99.251.239.140 (talk) 15:11, 15 September 2015 (UTC)