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2 D. Maulik
Fig. 1.2. Title page of Christian
Doppler's paper titled ªOn the
Coloured Light of the Double
Stars and Certain Other Stars
of the Heavens.º (Reprinted
from [1], with permission)
and at his recommendation Doppler was sent to the
Polytechnic Institute of Vienna for further education.
Doppler studied mathematics and physics in Vienna
for 3 years and then returned to Salzburg where
he concluded his education and eventually graduated
in 1829. For 4 years he held the position of assistant
in higher mathematics at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute.
Following this assitantship he experienced difficulty
finding an appropriate position, and in 1835
he seriously considered emigrating to the United
States. At this point, however, he was offered and accepted
the position of Professor of Elementary Mathematics
and Commercial Accounting at the State Secondary
School in Prague. The following year he was
also appointed Supplementary Professor of Higher
Mathematics at the Technical Institute in Prague. In
1841 Christian Doppler became a full Professor of
Mathematics and Practical Geometry at the latter institution.
One year later, on May 25, he presented his
landmark paper on the Doppler effect at a meeting of
the Natural Sciences Section of the Royal Bohemian
Society of Sciences in Prague. Ironically, there were
only five people and a transcriber in the audience.
The paper was entitled ªOn the Colored Light of the
Double Stars and Certain Other Stars of the Heavensº
(Fig. 1.2) and was published in 1843 in the Proceedings
of the society [2]. Of 51 papers Doppler published,
this one was destined to bring him lasting recognition.
Doppler's work was based on the theory of the aberration
of light developed by Edmund Bradley, the eighteenth-century
British Astronomer Royal. Doppler established
the principle of frequency shift and developed
the formula for calculating the velocity from the
shift. For elucidating the theoretic background of the
principle, Doppler used various analogies and examples
primarily based on transmission of light and
sound. Although his examples of sound transmission
were correct, those involving light transmission were
erroneous, as he presumed that all stars emitted only
pure white light. He postulated that the color of a star
was caused by the relative motions of the star and the