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Born on this day
Jean-Sylvain Bailly
Jean-Sylvain Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason.
37th week in year
15 September 2021

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Jean-Sylvain Bailly15.9.1736

Wikipedia (13 Sep 2013, 08:57)

Jean-Sylvain Bailly (15 September 1736 – 12 November 1793) was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason,[1][2] and political leader of the early part of the French Revolution. He presided over the Tennis Court Oath, served as the mayor of Paris from 1789 to 1791, and was ultimately guillotined during the Reign of Terror.


Scientific career

Born in Paris, Bailly was the son of Jacques Bailly, an artist and supervisor of the Louvre, and was the grandson of Nicholas Bailly, also an artist and a court painter. As a child he originally intended to follow in his family tradition and pursue a career in the arts, but he became deeply attracted to science, particularly astronomy, by the influence of Nicolas de Lacaille. An excellent student with a "particularly retentive memory and inexhaustible patience", he calculated an orbit for the next appearance of Halley's Comet (in 1759), and correctly reduced Lacaille's observations of 515 stars. He participated in the construction of an observatory at the Louvre. For such achievements he was elected to the 31st seat of the French Academy of Sciences in 1763.

   
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