Commemorative Plaque to Christian Doppler in Prague

1903; 1803–1853 

A marble memorial plaque from 1903 commemorates Christian Andreas Doppler, teacher and researcher in the field of mathematical and physical sciences (1803, Salzburg – 1853, Venice) and the now defunct building of the Prague Polytechnic, where he worked as a professor of arithmetic, algebra, theoretical geometry and accounting. The plaque can be found on Charles Square (No. 6/20). Doppler lived in Prague for twelve years.

 

The white marble memorial plaque from 1903 dedicated to Doppler is on the façade of the Prague Municipal Court building on its Charles Square side in Prague 2, and contains the following engraved text:

IN THE HOUSE NO. 4/II, WHICH STOOD IN THIS SPOT, THERE LIVED AND DID RESEARCH BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF HIS / WORLD-FAMOUS PRINCIPLE (1842), ON WHICH TODAY’S ASTROPHYSICS BUILDS, THE RENOWNED SCHOLAR / ----KRISTIAN DOPPLER ---- / PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND PRACTICAL GEOMETRY AT THE TECHNICAL SCHOOL IN PRAGUE. / HE WAS BORN IN 1803 IN SALZBURG AND DIED IN 1854 IN VENICE. 

This plaque was installed on the occasion of the centenary of Doppler’s birth and for more than a hundred years it had been the only memorial in the whole of Bohemia and Austria to this important teacher and researcher. However, the year of Doppler’s death given on it is wrong. In reality he died on 17 March 1853, aged 49, in Venice where he had gone to convalesce after a protracted illness. He went there with his friend, the philosopher Franz Exner, in November 1852, and he died of tuberculosis of the larynx five months later. In the cemetery of San Michele in Venice, Italian physicists inscribed Doppler’s marble tombstone with a dedication to the man who “penetrated deep into the mysteries of nature through study and science”. 

On the occasion of the above-mentioned Doppler’s anniversary in 1903, a new edition of Doppler’s essay on the sound wave theory and the light wave theory applied to various kinds of stars, On the Coloured Light of Double Stars and Some Other Stars in the Sky, was initiated by the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences Publishing House. The initiator was royal and imperial councillor, professor of mathematics at Charles University František Josef Studnička. The original paper was presented as a simple mathematical statement and, as was typical of Doppler, without any citations or scholarly sources. However, after being examined in 1842 at Palacký’s request, it was favourably reviewed by the university physicist Ferdinand Hessler and the eminent astronomer Karl Kreil. His colleague and Prague friend Bernard Bolzano also contributed to the popularization of Doppler’s work, and in 1843 he made him a full member of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, where the new member revived interest in the physical sciences.

In the preface to this edition, Studnička notes that he dedicated the third edition of his astronomical notes to the famous teacher and researcher, in which the known astrophysical consequences of the Doppler effect were also carefully analysed. The plan to install the plaque was also Studnička’s idea, which was then discussed and approved by the Prague City Council. It unanimously decided to place Doppler’s memorial plaque on the house where Doppler first formulated his principle. The city council even undertook to name the street connecting the new buildings of the university’s science institutes after him. But this never happened. 

His seminal work on physics principle from 1842 made Doppler’s name immortal. The Doppler principle, or Doppler shift, describes the change in the wavelength of a wave as a function of the relative motion of the observer and the source of the wave. In Doppler’s time, the phenomenon was primarily applied in acoustics, but in the 20th century, the Doppler effect revolutionized astrophysics, including through Einstein’s theory of relativity.

 

References

Nový, L. a kol.: Dějiny exaktních věd v českých zemích do konce 19. století. Praha 1961.

Pavlíková, Š.: Pražský spor o světlo (Diplomová práce FF ZČU), Plzeň 2018.

Štoll, I.: Život a dílo badatele Dopplera. Pokroky matematiky, fyziky a astronomie, 38/1993, č. 5, s.  260–269. – URL: https://dml.cz/handle/10338.dmlcz/139107 [9. 12. 2021].

Štoll, I. : Dopplerovský rok. Pokroky matematiky, fyziky a astronomie, 49/2004, č. 2, s.  89–94. – URL: https://dml.cz/handle/10338.dmlcz/141215 [9. 12. 2021].

Polák, M. – Broncová, D. – Milpo Media s.r.o.: Christian Doppler, Karlovo náměstí čp. 6/20 (Nové Město). URL: https://encyklopedie.praha2.cz/pametni-deska/264-christian-doppler-karlovo-namesti-cp-620 [9. 12. 2021].

Pamětní deska Christianu Dopplerovi (Bk). URL: https://automa.cz/cz/casopis-clanky/pametni-deska-christianu-dopplerovi-2006_04_31048_232/ [15. 12. 2021].

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