Encke was born in
Hamburg, where his father was the Pastor at
St. James' Church, Hamburg. He was the youngest of eight children, and at the time his father died, when he was four years old, the family was in straitened circumstances. Thanks to the financial assistance of a teacher, he was able to be educated at the
Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He studied
mathematics and
astronomy from 1811 at the
University of Göttingen under
Carl Friedrich Gauss, but he enlisted in the
Hanseatic Legion for the campaign of 1813–1814, serving as a sergeant in the artillery of the
Prussian army, in Holstein and Mecklenburg. In 1814 he resumed his studies at the University, but after
Napoleon's escape from Elba he returned to the military, serving until 1815 by which time he had become a lieutenant. Having returned to Göttingen in 1816, he was at once appointed by
Bernhardt von Lindenau as his assistant in the
observatory of Seeberg near
Gotha (he had become acquainted with von Lindenau during his military service). There he completed his investigation of the
comet of 1680, for which the
Cotta prize was awarded to him in 1817 by judges Gauss and
Olbers. He correctly assigned a period of 71 years to the comet of 1812, now known as
12P/Pons-Brooks. Eight masterly treatises on the comet's movements were published by him in the
Berliner Abhandlungen (1829–1859). From a fresh discussion of the
transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 he deduced a solar
parallax of 8.57
arcsecond. This and the corresponding distance to the sun were long accepted as authoritative. and a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849. Incipient brain-disease compelled him to withdraw from official life in November 1863. He still was director of the Berlin observatory until his death on 26 August 1865 in
Spandau. His successor was
Wilhelm Julius Foerster. He contributed extensively to the periodical literature of astronomy. Encke's grave is preserved at a cemetery in the
Kreuzberg section of Berlin, the
Friedhof II der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. II of the congregations of
Jerusalem's Church and
New Church) (entrance: opposite to 58–60, Zossener Str.; 61, Baruther Str. only for vehicles of the cemetery). His grave is close to that of the mathematician
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. ==Honors==