Christian Andreas Doppler

Christian Doppler.

Christian Doppler was born in 1803 as a son of a stone-cutter dynasty in Salzburg. Since he was physically weak, he could not assume the occupation of stone-cutter. He studied in Vienna and Linz and later taught in Prague at the junior high school.

In 1841, he was appointed as an official professor of mathematics and physics at the Technical University of Prague. In this time, he published more than fifty scientific works.

In 1842, he presented his most important work in the paper "On the Colored Light of Double Stars and Certain Other Stars of the Heavens". Therein, he describes the influence (later known as the Doppler Effect) of movement on the observed frequency of sources of light and sound.

In 1847, he moved to Chemnitz, where he taught at the mountain academy. In 1848, he returned to Vienna, where, in 1850, Emperor Franz Josef appointed him the Director of the newly founded Institute for Physics.

Christian Doppler was the first professor for experimental physics in Vienna. In 1853, he died in Venice of a lung illness.