Unlike many men of achievement, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel did little to give an indication of his forthcoming accomplishments during his early and limited education. He stumbled upon his genius by way of accepting an apprenticeship as a bookkeeper with a merchant house when he was 15 years old. Then, because Bessel wished to further his career and enter the world of foreign trade, he studied navigation as well as geography and foreign languages. This study of navigation soon blossomed into the study of astronomyand became an avocation that eventually led to a life's work affecting not only mathematics, but profoundly changing the world of astronomy. In his own lifetime, Bessel's discoveries were applauded as "inaugurating a new era of practical astronomy" and hailed as the "beginning of modern astronomy."

Bessel was born in Minden, Germany, on July 22, 1784. Not much is recorded about his family, except that his father was...