Guillaume Bigourdan

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Guillaume Bigourdan

Camille Guillaume Bigourdan (born April 6, 1851 in Sistels , France , † February 28, 1932 in Paris ) was a French astronomer and president of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Career

Guillaume Bigourdan grew up as the eldest of the three children of Pierre Bigourdan and Jeanne Carrère in the modest circumstances of a farmhouse. After his teacher and the village pastor had become aware of his high intelligence, his parents made it possible for him to attend grammar school, regardless of their material hardship, which he graduated from high school in 1870. In the course of his further studies, he acquired a license (today Bachelor ) for physics in 1874 , and two years later for mathematics.

In 1877, François Félix Tisserand , his former teacher and then director of the Toulouse observatory , appointed him an assistant. In 1879 he followed Tisserand, who had meanwhile become director of the Paris Observatory , to the French capital. As part of his work, he traveled to the Antilles island of Martinique in 1882 to observe the transit of Venus and in the following year to Saint Petersburg . He received his doctorate in 1886. In the observatory he took on, among other things, the training of his only 15-year-old assistant Gaston Fayet (1874-1967), who worked with him for many years and later worked as director of the observatory in Nice .

In 1897 he became titular astronomer at the Paris Observatory and in 1920 first director of the Bureau International de l'Heure, which had recently been founded, and retired in 1926.

Guillaume Bigourdan died on February 28, 1932 at the age of 80 in Paris.

He was married to Sophie Mouchez, a daughter of Admiral Amédée Mouchez (1821-1892), director of the Paris Observatory. The marriage resulted in nine children.

plant

Bigourdan spent twenty years examining and describing the positions of 6380 nebulae. He discovered about 500 new objects. His research results, published in five volumes in 1911, helped him achieve international fame. He also described a method for adjusting the equatorial telescope mount known as "Bigourdan's Method".

Publications

  • 1892: "Observations de 1884. Observations de Nébuleuses et d'amas stellaires", Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris.
  • 1905: "Les éclipses de soleil: instructions sommaires sur les observations que l'on peut faire pendant ces éclipses, et particulièrement pendant l'éclipse totale du 30 août 1905", 1905, Paris, Gauthier Villars.
  • 1917: "Observations de 1907. Observations de Nébuleuses et d'amas stellaires", Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris.

Awards

The French polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot named a fjord after Guillaume Bigourdan that was discovered during the Fifth French Antarctic Expedition (1908-1910) on the coast of Graham Land.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 20, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Bigourdan, Guillaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Sistel , France
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1932
Place of death Paris