Genus Schwabea

For Samuel Heinrich Schwabe (1789–1875), German botanist, pharmacist and astronomer, best remembered for his work on sunspots. In 1826, he started trying to find a new planet, tentatively called Vulcan, inside the orbit of Mercury, by looking at dark spots when it passed in front of the sun. For 17 years, from 1826–1843, Schwabe recorded sunspots trying to detect the new planet among them. He noticed regular variation in the number of sunspots over time with the number of spots reaching a maximum every 10 years. This ‘periodicity of sunspots’ is now fully recognised as one of the most important discoveries in astronomy. In 1857, Schwabe was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was a member of the Royal Society of London.