My interest in the history of the Struve family is long-standing but lay dormant until 1972, when I found myself organizing a symposium of the International Astronomical Union in memory of the second Otto Struve. To satisfy my own curiosity, I investigated the precise relationships of the famous astronomers in the family and published an account of them, based mainly on secondary sources. The exercise made me a ware that there was no biography in English of the first and probably still the greatest astronomer in the clan -- Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve. Wilhelm's son, the first Otto, wrote...
My interest in the history of the Struve family is long-standing but lay dormant until 1972, when I found myself organizing a symposium of the Interna...