Jean-Louis Pictet

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Jean-Louis Pictet - 1739-1781.jpg

Jean-Louis Pictet (born November 19, 1739 in Geneva , † October 3, 1781 ibid) was a Geneva lawyer, astronomer and naturalist.

biography

Pictet was the son of an officer who was in French service and initially studied law at the Academy in Geneva. He was admitted to the bar in 1762 and undertook a cavalier tour to England, the Netherlands and France with Paris in 1764/65. From 1770 he was on the Council of Two Hundred in Geneva and from 1775 on the Small Council. In 1772 he became an auditor and in 1778 a syndic of the city of Geneva.

In 1773 he married Marguerite Mallet, the daughter of an officer in the French service. In addition to his work as a lawyer and council member, he was interested in astronomy, natural sciences and natural history and worked for the pioneer of alpine research Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and accompanied him on his alpine trips.

He and his brother-in-law Jacques-André Mallet (1740–1790), who was also an astronomer, were invited by the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg to observe the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769 . To observe the transit of Venus, he undertook an expedition to Lapland and the Kola peninsula , where they observed the transit in Umba on the White Sea . He worked as a botanist, zoologist (collecting plants and bird skins), undertook meteorological observations and degree determinations, which he wrote down in a diary with Mallet.

According to the diary of the French envoy in Saint Petersburg Baron Marie Daniel Bourrée de Corberon (1748-1810) he was in Saint Petersburg in 1777.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Published by Jean-Daniel Candaux: Deux astronomes genevois dans la Russie de Catherine II, Ferney-Voltaire 2005
  2. ^ Corberon, Journal intime , Paris 1901, vol. 1, p. 195
personal data
SURNAME Pictet, Jean-Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Geneva astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1739
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1781
Place of death Geneva