We've seen this bookplate on several digitization requests @LindaHall_org recently, @JECumby and I are charmed by it. It is the bookplate of František Fischer, and here's a thread about who he was & how we put a name with this bookplate. #rarebooks#speccolls#histstm#histastro
We often see bookplates and cannot suss out whose they were. I took a go at "Mag. F. Fischer" in the googler, and came up with a catalog from Jeff Weber that identified Fischer as an astronomer from Prague. Now we have something more than a name! weberrarebooks.com/media/home/Cat…
Ok, so we know who he was, and his birth and death dates. What do we know about him? Thanks to some articles in Czech and some translation, we know something about Dr. František Fischer. Most of the really good stuff that follows is from pp. 8 and 9 here: hvezdarna-fp.cz/archiv-KR/KR-2…
Dr. Fischer was a pharmacist with a deep passion for astronomy. He developed an early passion for astronomy, one he took with him when he served in Tashkent in World War I. Apparently he worked part time at the observatory there, learning observational skills.
The observatory dome on his house had a diameter of 4.8 meters. It was on a separate floor from the main house, with a study and a darkroom. He had installed a refracting telescope with a diameter of 190mm and a focal length of 3000mm, made by Reinfelder & Hertel.
And here's that telescope I mentioned earlier, and his house, from the same PDF:
His focus was selenography - the mapping of the moon! This is borne out in the numerous books we have from his library (with his charming bookplate), this one as an example: catalog.lindahall.org/permalink/01LI…
Also borne out by this drawing by Fischer (from the PDF above)
He must have been a SERIOUS book collector too, y'all, as evidenced just by the material from his library at @LindaHall_org .
Finally, a super significant book that belonged to Fischer, the first discussion of the telescope in print, La Galla's "De phoenomenis in orbe lunae novi telescopii", 1612 (with a photo of Fischer's MS pencil acquisition notation!) catalog.lindahall.org/permalink/01LI…