Jérôme Lalande (nonfiction)

Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande.

Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (French: [lalɑ̃d]; 11 July 1732 – 4 April 1807) was a French astronomer, freemason and writer.

His parents sent him to Paris to study law, but as a result of lodging in the Hôtel Cluny, where Delisle had his observatory, he was drawn to astronomy, and became the zealous and favoured pupil of both Joseph Nicolas Delisle and Pierre Charles Le Monnier.

Having completed his legal studies, he was about to return to Bourg to practice as an advocate, when Lemonnier obtained permission to send him to Berlin, to make observations on the lunar parallax in concert with those of Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope.

Lalande devoted himself to the improvement of the planetary theory, publishing in 1759 corrected edition of Edmond Halley's tables, with a history of Halley's Comet whose return in that year he had helped Alexis Clairaut to calculate.

In 1762 Delisle resigned the chair of astronomy in the Collège de France in Lalande's favor. The duties were discharged by Lalande for forty-six years.

His house became an astronomical seminary, and amongst his pupils were Delambre, Giuseppe Piazzi, Pierre Méchain, and his own nephew Michel Lalande.

By his publications in connection with the transit of Venus of 1769 he won great fame.

His difficult personality lost him some popularity.

In 1766, Lalande, with Helvetius, founded the Les Sciences lodge in Paris, and received its recognition from Grand Orient de France in 1772. In 1776, he changed its name to Les Neuf Soeurs, and arranged for Benjamin Franklin to be chosen as the first worshipful master.

Lalande's career was an eminent one. As a lecturer and writer he helped popularize astronomy. His planetary tables, into which he introduced corrections for mutual perturbations, were the best available up to the end of the 18th century. In 1801, he endowed the Lalande Prize, administered by the French Academy of Sciences, for advances in astronomy.

Pierre-Antoine Véron, the young astronomer who for the first time in history determined the size of the Pacific Ocean from east to west, was Lalande's disciple.

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Benjamin Franklin (nonfiction)
• Joseph Nicolas Delisle (nonfiction)
• Pierre-Antoine Véron (nonfiction)
• Pierre Charles Le Monnier (nonfiction)

External links:

• Jérôme Lalande @ Wikipedia