, an eminent French astronomer, was born in Paris, Sept. 25, 1736.
, an eminent French astronomer, was born in Paris, Sept. 25, 1736. His father
was the fourth in succession of his family who followed the
profession of a painter and young Bailly was also destined
to painting, and had already made some progress in the art,
when he showed a decided inclination for the study of the
belles-lettres. Poetry was the first object that engaged his
attention he even produced some tragedies which were
praised by Lanoue, not however without advising his
young friend to attend rather to science and Lacaille essentially contributed to direct his attention to the study
of Natural Philosophy accordingly, in the year 1762, he
presented to the academy “Observations on the Moon,
”
which Lacaille had made him draw up with all the particularity of detail required* by the new state of astronomy,
and which were quoted by him with approbation, in the
sixth volume of the Ephemerides.
, an eminent French astronomer, was born at Mauriac, a town in Upper
, an eminent French astronomer, was born at Mauriac, a town in Upper Auvergne, on the 23d of May, 1728, of John Chappe, lord of the barony of Auteroche, and Magdalen de la Farge, daughter of Peter de la Farge, lord of larPierre. From his birth he enjoyed the valuable advantage of not being under the necessity of struggling, like many men of genius, with adversity and penury. The distinguished rank which his parents held in their province, added to their wealth and opulence, enabled them to bestow upon their son an excellent education, the foundation of which was laid at Mauriac, where he began his studies. Having made considerable progress here, he went afterwards to finish them at the college de Louis le Grand. M. Chappe, from his earliest infancy, shewed a surprising turn for drawing and the mathematics. Descartes was scarcely eight years of age when he was styled a philosopher, and Chappe at that age might have been called a mathematician. An irresistible impulse, and singular disposition, as if innate, led him to draw plans and make calculations; but these pursuits, quite forojgn to the studies in which he was then engaged, occupied no part of that time which was allotted for them. He applied to the former only at those moments which the regulations. of the college suffered him to call his own.
, an eminent French astronomer and mathematician, was born at Paris,
, an eminent French astronomer and mathematician, was born at Paris, Nov. 23, 1715. His education was chiefly directed to the sciences, to which he manifested an early attachment; and his progress was such that at the age of twenty-one, he was chosen as the co-operator of Maupertuis, in the measure of a degree of the meridian at the polar circle. At the period when the errors in Flamsteed’s catalogue of the stars began to be manifest, he undertook to determine anew the positions of the zodiacal stars as being the most useful to astronomers. In 1743 he traced at St. Sulpice a grand meridian line, in order to ascertain certain solar motions, and also the small variations in the obliquity of the ecliptic.