Abbe Lacaille
| Nicolas Louis de La Caille | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille by Anne-Louise Le Jeuneux
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| Born |
15 March 1713 Rumigny, France |
| Died | 21 March 1762 (aged 49) Paris, France |
| Citizenship | French |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
Abbé Nicolas Louis de La Caille, sometimes spelled Lacaille, (French: [lakaj]; 15 March 1713 – 21 March 1762) was a French astronomer.
Born at Rumigny (in present-day Ardennes), he attended school in Mantes-sur-Seine (now Mantes-la-Jolie). Afterwards, he studied rhetoric and philosophy at the and then theology at the Collège de Navarre. He was left destitute in 1731 by the death of his father, who had held a post in the household of the duchess of Vendôme. However, he was supported in his studies by the Duc de Bourbon, his father's former patron.
After he graduated, he did not accept ordination as a priest but took deacon's orders, becoming an Abbé. He concentrated thereafter on science, and, through the patronage of Jacques Cassini, obtained employment, first in surveying the coast from Nantes to Bayonne, then, in 1739, in remeasuring the French arc of the meridian, for which he is honored with a pyramid at Juvisy-sur-Orge. The success of this difficult operation, which occupied two years, and achieved the correction of the anomalous result published by Jacques Cassini in 1718, was mainly due to Lacaille's industry and skill. He was rewarded by admission to the Royal Academy of Sciences and appointment as Professor of mathematics in the Mazarin college of the University of Paris, where he constructed a small observatory fitted for his own use. He was the author of a number of influential textbooks and a firm advocate of Newtonian gravitational theory. Among his students were Antoine Lavoisier and Jean Sylvain Bailly, both of whom were guillotined during the Revolution.
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