Pierre Henri Puiseux (; 20 July 1855 – 28 September 1928) was a French

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

. Born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, son of Victor Puiseux, he was educated at the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

before starting work as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1885. He worked on the

aberration of light In astronomy, aberration (also referred to as astronomical aberration, stellar aberration, or velocity aberration) is a phenomenon which produces an apparent motion of celestial objects about their true positions, dependent on the velocity of t ...

, asteroids, lunar dynamics and, in collaboration with Maurice Loewy, the ill-fated ''

Carte du Ciel The Carte du Ciel (literally, 'Map of the Sky') and the Astrographic Catalogue (or Astrographic Chart) were two distinct but connected components of a massive international astronomical project, initiated in the late 19th century, to catalogue an ...

'' project. Puiseux created a photographic atlas of the Moon based on 6000 photographs taken by him and Loewy. In 1892 he was awarded the Valz Prize, and in 1896 was he awarded the

Lalande Prize The Lalande Prize (French: ''Prix Lalande'' also known as Lalande Medal) was an award for scientific advances in astronomy, given from 1802 until 1970 by the French Academy of Sciences. The prize was endowed by astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 180 ...

, both from the French Academy of Sciences, which he would later become a member of in 1912. In 1900, Puiseux received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France (the French astronomical society). He became the Society's president from 1911-1913.de la Société astronomique de France'', 1911, vol. 25, pp. 581-586
/ref> The crater Puiseux on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

is named after him. He was a believing and practicing Catholic who died with the sacraments of the Church. Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

References

External links

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P. Puiseux
@

Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ...

Atlas photographique de la Lune
on the digital library of Paris Observatory

Obituaries

JRASC 22 (1928) 394
(one sentence)

(one paragraph) 1855 births 1928 deaths 19th-century French astronomers École Normale Supérieure alumni Members of the French Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Lalande Prize 20th-century French astronomers {{france-astronomer-stub