Jean Dominique Comte de Cassini
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Jean Dominique Comte de Cassini , also known as Cassini IV , (born June 30, 1748 in Paris , † October 18, 1845 in Thury-sous-Clermont ) was a French cartographer and astronomer .
Life
Jean Dominique Cassini was born at the Paris observatory , the director of which was his father, César François Cassini de Thury .
In 1768 he undertook a trip to America as commissioner of the Academy of Sciences , of which he later became a member, which he described in a book published in 1770. In 1787 he took part in the English-French trigonometric survey , which was used to determine the exact longitude difference between the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Paris Obervatorim. In 1788 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . During a stay in England, he and Pierre Méchain and Adrien-Marie Legendre visited the German-born astronomer Wilhelm Herschel in his observatory in Slough . A work in which Cassini described his duties appeared in 1791. He completed the Carte de Cassini , his father's map of France. The map was published in 1793 by the Academy of Sciences and served as the basis for the "Atlas National", which represented France divided into departments .
In 1784 he took over the post of observatory director from his father. However, his plans for reconstruction and refurbishment after the French Revolution met with the toughest opposition from the National Assembly . His position became untenable and on September 6, 1793 he resigned. In 1794 he was jailed for seven months. After his release he went to Thury.
In 1810 his extensive work Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'observatoire de Paris was published. a. the autobiography of his great-grandfather Giovanni Domenico Cassini contained.
literature
- René Taton: Cassini, Jean-Dominique (Cassini IV) . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 3 : Pierre Cabanis - Heinrich von Dechen . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1971, p. 106-107 .
Web links
- The Cassini cards on the Internet
- des villages de Cassini aux communes d'aujourd'hui (French), advertising-free site with search function for municipalities on Cassini maps
Footnotes
- ↑ Erik Arnberger , Ingrid Kretschmer : Essence and tasks of cartography. Topographic maps (recording, drafting of topographic and geographical maps, map series) (= Cartography and its peripheral areas. Encyclopedia , Vol. 1), Volume 1: Text volume . Deuticke, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7005-4392-1 , p. 464.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cassini, Jean Dominique Comte de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cassini IV. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French geodesic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 30, 1748 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 18, 1845 |
| Place of death | Thury-sous-Clermont , Oise department , France |