Struve studied philology in Dorpat (these days Tartu / Estland) and finished his studies in 1811. During this time, Struve showed great interest and talent in mathematical, physical and astronomical sciences and caught the interest of Prof. Parrot, the director of the University of Dorpat. He encouraged Struve not to continue with his career in philology but to concentrate on his studies in astronomy and related subjects.
Struve's family had a close connection with the well-known astronomer Heinrich Christian Schumacher. This connection was further motivation for the young philology student to take Prof. Parrot’s advice. In 1813 he attracted the attention of the scientific community by measuring the exact geographic position of the observatory in Dorpat. For this extraordinary scientific work he was given a professorship at the observatory of the University of Dorpat in late 1813.
Nine years later, in 1822, F.G.W. Struve became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. Four years later (in 1826) he was given honorable membership in the Saint-Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The Russian Academy of Sciences had made plans to build a new, modern observatory. The older one, located inside the Kunstkammeri in the city center of Saint Petersburg, had become more and more useless for scientific studies due to the vibrations of passing carriages. In 1827 the planning phase was finished and the project ready to start.
In 1830, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve was sent to the best known observatories around the world and after finishing his journey, Struve gave a detailed description of what he saw to Czar Nikolaus I and made many helpful suggestions for building the new observatory. Nikolaus I was so impressed by this report that he asked Struve to supervise the construction of the project. In 1832 Struve became an elected member of the Academy of Sciences in Saint-Petersburg. Even though he was still in Dorpat, he worked closely with the group which planned the new observatory.
In spite of the additional work, Struve never neglected his studies at the observatory at the University of Dorpat. He felt very close to his "home" Dorpat and so this observatory became a prototype for the later observatory in Pulkovo.
Pulkovo had been selected as the site for the new observatory, because it was only 20km (12.5 miles) from Saint Petersburg and 8.5km (5.3 miles) from the summer residence of the royal family in Tsarskoye Selo. Another advantage was that it was 75m above the surrounding area.
2.368 million square feet (0,22km 2) of land was given to the Academy of Sciences by the Czar. Alexander Bruellow, a very famous and well-known architect of that time, realized Struve’s ideas perfectly, thereby setting the foundation for great scientific work in the future.
The foundation stone was laid on June 21st 1835 and the future instrumentation was already in the process of being built. The telescopes were manufactured in London, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Saint Petersburg after detailed instructions from Struve. His assistant Porth, a former student, was given the supervision of the delivery of the equipment.
After the delivery of the four most important instruments, the "Ertel Transit Instrument", the "Ertel Vertical Meridian", the "Repsold Meridian" , and the "Repsold Transit Instrument" , Struve’s scientific colleagues Fuss, Sabler, and Struve’s oldest son, Otto, started to set up the equipment. They did it with extreme precision, but also with the highest enthusiasm. Struve was full of optimistic energy and in his detailed notes about the construction of the observatory - Discription de l’ Observatoire Central de Pulkova - F.G.W. Struve described in poetic words the set up of those new and modern instruments.
The official opening celebration was on August 7th, 1839. Many political representatives from Moscow and other Russian cities, foreign ambassadors, and selected scientists, as well as all the members of the Academy of Sciences, attended the ceremony.
On September 26th of 1839, Czar Nikolaus I was given an extensive two hour tour of the observatory, including the instrumentation and reports about the scientific work. He seemed especially interested in the way the institution was organized.
Struve was honored with the famous medal of the Holy Stanislav for his outstanding performance in establishing the Central Observatory at Pulkovo. In addition, the Czar promised an extraordinary salary for Struve and his co-workers as well as generous funding for the institution.
Because of the special climate and the geographical position of the observatory, Struve concentrated his work on stellar astronomy. Even though the Pulkovo Manifest stated the detailed and regular observation of planets to be the main objective, measuring the star positions with extremely high precision, resulting in precise star catalogues, played a special role.
Establishing exact geographical maps was another main project. The baseline for that was the „Pulkovo zero meridian„ which exactly crossed the tower of the Pulkovo observatory. In later years, the Russian Empire was mapped relative to that meridian, a requirement for opening up natural resources in the north and far east of Russia.
The scientists of the Pulkovo Observatory were working very closely with the hydrographic branch of the Emperor Russian Geographic Society and so, after 20 years, Pulkovo also became the center of all astronomic - geographic expeditions undertaken in Russia. The expeditions to the Ural, East Siberia and to the Chinese border are only a few examples.
Pulkovo became especially famous for its more than 40 year long measurements of the meridian that had its most southern point at the river mouth of the Danube and its most northern point in Norway. The observatory also became famous in the scientific community for its teaching, being open to all students, not only astronomy or geodesy. It welcomed students from foreign countries as well. All navy academy graduates had to take a two-year course at Pulkovo.
From the beginning, Struve concentrated on building and completing the library that already had 9200 books of technical literature by 1865 and an additional 9600 dissertations.
Struve was especially proud of having many rare manuscripts, including, for example, those of the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. This is one of the reasons that Pulkovo played such an important role in the astronomical world of the times, being given the name „Astronomic Capital of the World „ by the scientific community.
F.G.W. Struve was the chairman of Pulkovo until 1861. Up to this time, he developed many observational and measuring methods, did detailed studies on our Milky Way, discovered 58 double stars and measured their rotation periods, published a catalogue of 3112 double stars and measured parameters of the sun’s motion. These are only a few examples of the work that he had accomplished when he gave the chair to his son Otto Struve to lead the observatory to new scientific frontiers.
The foundation of the Pulkovo observatory had a huge impact on the scientific community. There was a growing interest in this modern and well-equipped facility that was perfectly suited to studies of the universe. Thus Pulkovo had close contacts with all major observatories around the world, leading to many constructive scientific advances.
After the October Revolution in 1917, Pulkovo played a central astronomical role within the Soviet Union. In fact, it was given the status of a ‘Central Observatory’. The new main objective was the construction and supervision of new observatories in the Ukraine, the Caucasus, central Asia, and later in the Baltic States and South America. Scientists from Pulkovo played a leading role in constructing the instrumentation for those associated observatories as well as teaching new generations of astronomers.
The days of the „October Revolution„ in November of 1917 and the days of October of 1919 were some of the most difficult and painful times in Pulkovo’s history. This period was only topped by the siege by German troops between September of 1941 and January of 1944. Between 1917 and 1919, supporters and enemies of the „Revolution„ fought heavy battles on Pulkovo’s grounds and damaged the observatory badly. Shortly after the revolution, Pulkovo became known to be the worldwide leader in astronomy.
In 1934, the observatory became part of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as did the associated library three years later.
Pulkovo experienced very difficult times during the „Stalin Era„ , especially in 1934. Its director Boris Petrowitsch Gerassimowitsch, author of the well known textbook ‘A course in Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy’ was taken to prison and executed for the standard for this reason - spy activity against party and Government with the intention of encroachment and so on. There were among his personal accusation the words: „ .... and also he is guilty of harmful activities in the matter in the solar eclipse observation. „
Out of 20 scientists who were taken to prison, an additional 6 (apart from Gerassimowitsch) were executed by the so-called „Trojka„ because of counter revolutionary activities. The others were sentenced to long prison terms and were deported to concentration camps in GULAG. Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Kosyrev, one of the most famous astronomers of the pre and post World War II period, was taken to 48 different prison camps. In the mid fifties, he was allowed to return to the Central Observatory in Pulkovo.
During the years of the long siege of Leningrad by German troops, the observatory and its ground were completely destroyed by the heavy artillery and fire attacks of the advancing German troops.
Before the Germans started their biggest offense, the main instrumentation, including the biggest refractor in the world with a diameter of 76cm (30 inch), was brought to Leningrad, allowing it to escape the attack. Thanks to the library director Elena Winterhalter and her workers, lots of manuscripts from the 15-19th century were saved, among them fundamental works in the area of applied astronomy and geography.
It almost seems like a miracle that so many great books could be saved. Among them are the works of the well known doctor and astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthaeus Olbers (1758-1840), best known for his „Olbers Paradox„ in the area of cosmology.
Even today it is not understood why Stalin ordered the complete reconstruction of Pulkovo (following the old plans) in March of 1945. Considering his insane conquest that got many Pulkovo scientists killed, it is even less understandable. The architect A.V. Schtschussjew was given the supervision of that giant project for which he got special support from A.A. Mikhailov, the president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
During this difficult time, enormous efforts were made to reconstruct the totally destroyed observatory. Nine years later the work paid off and, in May of 1954, Pulkovo was officially re-opened. Many politicians, foreign guests and scientists from different faculties attended the ceremony yet again. Equipped with the latest technology of that time, Pulkovo was well prepared to face future scientific challenges.
The main goals of the observatory remained mostly the same (as written in the Struve´s old manifest). In addition, they focused on the exact measurements of time and Pulkovo also established a service for pinpointing precise latitudes and the Earth rotation velocity variation, which were much appreciated by the geophysicists. A main research interest was the observation and forecast of solar activity. This research provided important information that lead to the understanding of the propagation of radio waves during solar activity as well as the sun’s impact on weather, climate and the earth’s atmosphere.
The radio astronomy instruments and scientific study of this new branch, design of the new instruments and development the new methodic for the satellite astronomy just after the first “Sputnik“ lunch on the 4th of October 1957 - all these inspire the enthusiasm of young generation of astronomer, plotted around those who had surveyed that extremly complex period of the Pulkovo history.
This is, by far, not all that Pulkovo is known for. This institution made major advances in the areas of photography, star spectroscopy, measuring of stars brightness, planetology and tracking of the motion of the earth’s poles.
Furthermore, the scientists there undertook remarkable projects such as special radioastronomical research, advances in cosmic geodesy and especially the worldwide-acknowledged success in launching a Stratospheric Telescope to take extremely detailed pictures of the sun. Such detail has never been repeated, not even with today's technology.
Further milestones in the 160 year long history of Pulkovo are the 6.0m reflector that was installed in 1970 and was the biggest instrument in world until 1998. The radio telescope RATAN-600, part of the experimental complex LPR (Large Pulkovo Radiotelescope), in the north Caucasus should also be mentioned. In addition, Pulkovo runs the ‘Latitude Laboratory’ in Blagoveshchensk and the ‘High Altitude Solar Station’ in Kislovodsk with a 50cm Chronograph. Its 50th anniversary was celebrated in 1998 at the Central Observatory at Pulkovo.
Until 1980, 150 scientist were working at the Pulkovo observatory, including about 15 Ph D s from the math and physics departments and 85 graduate students with the same background.
Research in the area of solar physics, meaning the study of solar activities and fine details in different layers of the sun, still plays a major role in today’s activities. This also includes the study of the solar magnetic field by optical and radio-astronomical methods. Equally important are the analysis of star systems and their dynamics, as well as infrared astronomy and the photometric and spectral classification of stars and globular clusters.
During the more than 160 years of astronomy at Pulkovo, its scientists published many books and magazines such as: ‘Izvestia Glavnoi Astronomicheskoi Observatorii v Pulkove’ and ‘Trudy’. Bulletins such as ‘Solnechnye Dannye’ and ‘Catalogue of solar activity’ are known all over the world.
Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, Pulkovo had frequent correspondence not only with partner countries of the USSR but also with observatories around the world. The fact that the astronomers at Pulkovo would subscribe to 227 publications from 36 countries shows their interest in astronomy around the world.
The ‘International Astronomy Union’ (IAU) has given many important positions to scientists from Pulkovo in recognition of their outstanding scientific work.
Many efforts of the observatory scientists were activated for the space astronomy designing. The projects for space astronomy and for the stereoscopic mode of the observation from the circular Lagrangian libration points in the “Sun-Earth System“ have been proposed and are under designing.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the observatory has faced its most difficult times since the Stalin era. It is as a result of the courage and outstanding accomplishments of Prof. Dr. Victor K. Abalakin (director of the Pulkovo observatory) and of his committed fellow astronomers that this institution is still doing world-class astronomy in spite of the catastrophic economical situation in Russia. Let us hope that this will continue in the future.
last update November 14, 1999