Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille
French astronomer who catalogued southern stars and named 14 constellations.
Last updated
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille was a French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 of the 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa, observing over 10,000 stars using a refracting telescope.
Background
Lacaille was born at Rumigny in the Ardennes in eastern France and attended school in Mantes-sur-Seine. He studied rhetoric and philosophy at the Collège de Lisieux and theology at the Collège de Navarre. Left destitute in 1731 by his father's death, he was supported by the Duc de Bourbon. He took deacon's orders, becoming an Abbé, and concentrated on science.
Through Jacques Cassini's patronage, he surveyed the coast from Nantes to Bayonne and in 1739 remeasured the French meridian arc, correcting an anomalous result published by Jacques Cassini in 1718. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences and appointed professor of mathematics at the Mazarin college of the University of Paris, where he built a small observatory. His students included Antoine Lavoisier and Jean Sylvain Bailly.
Did You Know?
- Lacaille named 14 constellations, including Mensa, the only one named after a terrestrial feature (Table Mountain).
- The comet now known as Halley's Comet was named after Edmond Halley, not by Lacaille.
More in Discoverers of astronomical objects
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the , each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced