Ludwig Biermann
German astronomer (1907-1986)
Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann (March 13, 1907 – January 12, 1986) was a German astronomer, obtaining his Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1932.
He made important contributions to astrophysics and plasma physics, discovering the Biermann battery. He predicted the existence of the solar wind based on the study of cometary tails, which he dubbed "solar corpuscular radiation"; the theory was later developed by Eugene Parker.
He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 1961. He won the Bruce Medal in 1967 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1974.
Asteroid 73640 Biermann is named in his honor.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62131. VIAF identifies the subject as 37713722. The Library of Congress control number is n88189572. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1986, 1932 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ludwig Biermann” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.