Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was born at Minden, in Westphalia, July 22, 1784. A certain taste for figures, coupled with a still stronger distaste for the Latin accidence, directed his inclination and his father's choice towards a mercantile career. In his fifteenth year, accordingly, he entered the house of Kuhlenkamp and Sons, in Bremen, as an apprenticed clerk. He was now thrown completely upon his own resources. From his father, a struggling Government official, heavily weighted with a large family, he was well aware that he had nothing to expect; his dormant faculties were roused by the necessity for self-dependence, and he set himself to push manfully forward along the path that lay before him. The post of supercargo on one of the trading expeditions sent out from the Hanseatic towns to China and the East Indies was the aim of his boyish ambition, for the attainment of which he sought to qualify himself by the industrious acquisition of suitable and useful knowledge. He learned English in two or three months; picked up Spanish with the casual aid of a gunsmith's apprentice; studied the geography of the distant lands which he hoped to visit; collected information as to their climates, inhabitants, products, and the courses of trade. He desired to add some acquaintance with the art (then much neglected) of taking observations at sea; and thus, led on from navigation to astronomy, and from astronomy to mathematics, he groped his way into a new world. It was characteristic of him that the practical problems of science should have attracted him before his mind was as yet sufficiently matured to feel the charm of its abstract beauties. His first attempt at observation was made with a sextant, rudely constructed under his own directions, and a common clock. Its object was the determination of the longitude of Bremen, and its success, he tells us himself,[60] filled him with a rapture of delight, which, by confirming his tastes, decided his destiny. He now eagerly studied Bode's _Jahrbuch_ and Von Zach's _Monatliche Correspondenz_, overcoming each difficulty as it arose with the aid of Lalande's _Traité d'Astronomie_, and supplying, with amazing rapidity, his early deficiency in mathematical training. In two years he was able to attack a problem which would have tasked the patience, if not the skill, of the most experienced astronomer. Amongst the Earl of Egremont's papers Von Zach had discovered Harriot's observations on Halley's comet at its appearance in 1607, and published them as a supplement to Bode's Annual. With an elaborate care inspired by his youthful ardour, though hardly merited by their loose nature, Bessel deduced from them an orbit for that celebrated body, and presented the work to Olbers, whose reputation in cometary researches gave a special fitness to the proffered homage. The benevolent physician-astronomer of Bremen welcomed with surprised delight such a performance emanating from such a source.