Georg Frederik Ursin

Georg Frederik Krüger Ursin was a Danish mathematician and astronomer, born on 22 June 1797 and died in Copenhagen on 4 December 1849. His father, Georg Jacob Krüger, was a first lieutenant in the Royal Danish Navy who in 1798 was stripped of his functions and taken to Munkholmen, an islet north of Trondheim. In that same year the boy received a royal licence to bear the family name of his mother, Jacobine Ursin, daughter of a rear admiral and wife of a wealthy shipbuilder and shipyard owner, Lars Larsen. In 1814 Ursin passed an examination in land surveying, and in 1815 he graduated with distinction from Metropolitanskolen; after winning a prize assignment on the regular polyhedron he passed a second examination with distinction. A DSB Class EA locomotive, number 3020, carries his name.