The life of Christian Andreas Doppler (1803-1853)

Elementary school in Salzburg and middle school in Salzburg and Linz

From 1810 to 1816, Christian Doppler attended primary school in Salzburg.

Because of his delicate physique, there was no question of this son of a stonemason entering into the family business after elementary school. The only option for Christian to find a place in good society was to take up commerce or seek out a liberal profession in the gradually growing educated middle classes.

In order to get a professional training in commerce Christian attended three years of middle school in Salzburg (1816 to 1819) and an additional fourth year (1820/21) in Linz.

Academic secondary school in Salzburg

After his vocational education at the polytechnic, in order to be able to study at university, Doppler needed to obtain an academic secondary school qualification. Having already previously attended secondary school for three years, Doppler completed the remaining six semesters of upper-secondary in half the normal time. He went on to attend the Lyceum and graduated within the usual two years as the best candidate out of 37, and a grade of “eminent” – or “remarkable”. At the same time, he had also been learning English, Italian and French.

He was employed by Adam Burg on a fixed-term contract as an assistant for higher mathematics at the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna.

Employment as an accountant in Bruck an der Leitha

For want of a research appointment, Christian Doppler worked as an accountant for a year at a cotton mill in Bruck an der Leitha. Because all of his applications for academic positions had been unsuccessful, he was planning on emigrating to the USA. However, just as these plans were starting to take shape, he received an offer for the position of professor of arithmetic, algebra and geometry at the Prague Corporate Secondary School.

Professor of arithmetic, algebra and geometry at the Prague Corporate Secondary School.

Publication of  “On the coloured light of binary stars and other stars of the heavens”

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Professor in Schemnitz

Employment as professor of mathematics, physics and mechanics at the Mining and Forestry Academy in Schemnitz (today, Banská Štiavnica) in the Slovak Ore Mountains, and simultaneous appointment as “imperial and royal mining counsel”.

Image By Benjamín Jarčuška (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Elected as a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Prague on the event of its 500th anniversary.

Doppler appointed professor of geodesy at the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna, and successor to Simon Stampfer.

As the 1848 Hungarian Revolution spread from Vienna to Budapest, and the environment grew increasingly nationalistic, the unrest also affected Schemnitz, which was a hungarian town at the time. The Schemnitz Mining Academy closed for two years.
At the beginning of 1849, Professor Simon von Stampfer, who had been granted a knighthood in recognition of his scientific achievements, retired. In Salzburg, this man had been instrumental in setting his student, Doppler on his life’s scientific course.  Now the Chair for Geodesics at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute was free, and Christian Doppler was appointed as Stampfer’s successor.