Jerome Lalande
Jérôme Lalande, in full Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande,
was born on July 11th 1732, in
France he would go on to become an important French astronomer.
Lalande devoted himself to the improvement of planetary
theory, publishing in 1759 a corrected edition of the tables of Halley’s Comet.
He helped organize international collaboration in observing the transits of
Venus in 1761 and 1769; the data obtained made possible the accurate
calculation of the distance between Earth and the Sun. In 1762 Lalande was
appointed to the chair of astronomy in the Collège de France, Paris, a position
that he held for 46 years.
He died April 4th 1807 in Paris.
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