The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 4 (of 7)Malkin, Arthur Thomas
History
The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 4 (of 7)
Malkin, Arthur Thomas
Biography
DELAMBRE.
The time is not yet come when a memoir of the personal life of Delambre
could be attempted with any chance of interesting the reader. The
accounts which have been published from authentic sources are very
meagre; and, as may be supposed, this country is not the place in which
better can be obtained. We must therefore content ourselves with
offering a slight table of the principal events of his public career,
and proceed to give some account of his extraordinary labours.
Jean Baptist Joseph Delambre was born September 19, 1749, at or near
Amiens. He studied under Delille at the college of Plessis, applying
himself particularly to the learned languages. His accurate and ready
knowledge of Greek afterwards proved an element of no mean importance in
the merit of his ‘History of Astronomy.’
Though the extent of his works would give the idea of a very long life
applied to one subject in all its bearings, yet Delambre was more than
thirty years old before he turned his attention to astronomy. It is said
that he accidentally entered the room where Lalande was delivering a
lecture on some part of that science, while either waiting for or coming
from another on the Greek language. Be that as it may, he commenced his
studies under the celebrated astronomer just named before 1785, in which
year the calculation of the longitudes and latitudes of the stars in
Mayer’s Catalogue, by Delambre, was published, in the ‘Connaissance des
Tems’ for 1788. In 1789 he published Tables of Jupiter and Saturn; and
in 1790 Tables of Uranus, which gained the prize of the Academy of
Sciences; at the same time he was actively engaged in correcting, by
observation, the existing tables of right ascensions. In 1791 he
published new Tables of Jupiter’s Satellites, which Lalande calls “Un
des plus grands travaux astronomiques qu’on ait faits.”
In 1792 Delambre aided Lalande in calculating the planetary tables for
the third edition of his ‘Astronomy;’ and was appointed a member of the
Institute, and also of the Commission for measuring a Degree of the
Meridian. Of his share in this operation we shall presently speak. In
the same year he published his first Tables of the Sun, and a second set
in 1806, together with Tables of Refraction. In 1817 he again
constructed Tables of Jupiter’s Satellites. In 1795 he was appointed to
the _Bureau des Longitudes_; in 1802 he was made _Inspecteur Général des
Etudes_, in which capacity he formed the Lyceums of Moulins and Lyons.
In 1803 he became perpetual secretary of the class of mathematics in the
Institute, and the various _éloges_ which are found in the Memoirs of
that body till 1822 are from his pen. In 1807 he succeeded Lalande as
Professor at the College of France; in 1808 he was appointed Treasurer
of the University, and in 1821, Officer of the Legion of Honour. He died
August 19, 1822, at the age of seventy-three.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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