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Sebastian Finsterwalder
Sebastian Finsterwalder (4 October 1862 – 4 December 1951) was a German mathematician and glaciologist. Acknowledged as the "father of glacier photogrammetry"; he pioneered the use of repeat photography as a temporal surveying instrument in measurement of the geology and structure of the Alps and their glacier flows. The measurement techniques he developed and the data he produced are still in use to discover evidence for climate change.
Sebastian Finsterwalder was born 4 October 1862 in Rosenheim, son of Johann Nepomuk Finsterwalder, a master baker from Antdorf near Weilheim, Upper Bavaria, and Anna Amman of Rosenheim. He died 4 December 1951 in Munich). He was a Bavarian mathematician and surveyor. In 1892 he married Franziska Mallepell (d. 1953) from Brixen, South Tyrol. Their two sons worked in similar fields; Richard Finsterwalder (1899-1963), Professor at the Technical University in Hanover and Munich, and Ulrich Finsterwalder (1897-1988), a civil engineer.
A keen mountaineer, Finsterwalder became interested, through the influence of his friend E. Richter, in alpine fossils as indicators of the geology and structure of the Alps and their glaciers. His desire for accurate, but also less costly, motion measurements on glaciers led him to glaciological applications of photogrammetry in geodesy.
In 1886, aged 24, he received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen, under the guidance of the algebraic geometer Alexander von Brill. Finsterwalder observed that Rudolf Sturm's analysis of the "homography problem" (1869) can be used to solve the problem of 3D-reconstruction using point matches in two images; which is the mathematical foundation of photogrammetry.
Finsterwalder pioneered geodetic surveys in the high mountains. At the age of 27 years he conducted a first glacier mapping project at Vernagtferner in the Ötztal Alps, Austria.
Following the 1878 work of Italian engineer Pio Paganini of the Istituto Geografico Militare and others, Finstenwalder advanced methods for reconstruction and measurements of three-dimensional objects from photographic images.
He was appointed professor at the Technical University of Munich in 1891, succeeding his teacher, A. Voss, at the Department of Analytical Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus. He stayed at the university for forty years, until 1931. In 1892, he married, and completed the first recording of the Bavarian glacier in Wettersteingebirge and the Berchtesgaden Alps.
He applied the technique of plane table photogrammetry in addition to a conventional geodetic survey, assisted by the novel lightweight, accurate phototheodolite that he had developed for high-mountain applications. The device was based on the prototype phototheodolite developed by Albrecht Meydenbauer (1834-1921) for architectural applications. From 1890 Finsterwalder also employed aerial photography, reconstituting the topography of the area of Gars am Inn in 1899 from a pair of balloon photographs using mathematical calculations of many points in the images.
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Sebastian Finsterwalder
Sebastian Finsterwalder (4 October 1862 – 4 December 1951) was a German mathematician and glaciologist. Acknowledged as the "father of glacier photogrammetry"; he pioneered the use of repeat photography as a temporal surveying instrument in measurement of the geology and structure of the Alps and their glacier flows. The measurement techniques he developed and the data he produced are still in use to discover evidence for climate change.
Sebastian Finsterwalder was born 4 October 1862 in Rosenheim, son of Johann Nepomuk Finsterwalder, a master baker from Antdorf near Weilheim, Upper Bavaria, and Anna Amman of Rosenheim. He died 4 December 1951 in Munich). He was a Bavarian mathematician and surveyor. In 1892 he married Franziska Mallepell (d. 1953) from Brixen, South Tyrol. Their two sons worked in similar fields; Richard Finsterwalder (1899-1963), Professor at the Technical University in Hanover and Munich, and Ulrich Finsterwalder (1897-1988), a civil engineer.
A keen mountaineer, Finsterwalder became interested, through the influence of his friend E. Richter, in alpine fossils as indicators of the geology and structure of the Alps and their glaciers. His desire for accurate, but also less costly, motion measurements on glaciers led him to glaciological applications of photogrammetry in geodesy.
In 1886, aged 24, he received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen, under the guidance of the algebraic geometer Alexander von Brill. Finsterwalder observed that Rudolf Sturm's analysis of the "homography problem" (1869) can be used to solve the problem of 3D-reconstruction using point matches in two images; which is the mathematical foundation of photogrammetry.
Finsterwalder pioneered geodetic surveys in the high mountains. At the age of 27 years he conducted a first glacier mapping project at Vernagtferner in the Ötztal Alps, Austria.
Following the 1878 work of Italian engineer Pio Paganini of the Istituto Geografico Militare and others, Finstenwalder advanced methods for reconstruction and measurements of three-dimensional objects from photographic images.
He was appointed professor at the Technical University of Munich in 1891, succeeding his teacher, A. Voss, at the Department of Analytical Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus. He stayed at the university for forty years, until 1931. In 1892, he married, and completed the first recording of the Bavarian glacier in Wettersteingebirge and the Berchtesgaden Alps.
He applied the technique of plane table photogrammetry in addition to a conventional geodetic survey, assisted by the novel lightweight, accurate phototheodolite that he had developed for high-mountain applications. The device was based on the prototype phototheodolite developed by Albrecht Meydenbauer (1834-1921) for architectural applications. From 1890 Finsterwalder also employed aerial photography, reconstituting the topography of the area of Gars am Inn in 1899 from a pair of balloon photographs using mathematical calculations of many points in the images.