Zirkoff B. - Appendix (BCW vol.12): Difference between revisions

'''Bailly, Jean-Sylvain (1736-1793)'''. French astronomer, orator and politician. As a scientist, he was very much of a genius. While his father showed no particular interest in him, his mother devoted herself to his early education at home. Being a very precocious child, he soon acquired wide literary knowledge, and at sixteen became a collaborator and trainee of the famous astronomer, Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713-1762). He calculated an orbit for the comet of 1759 (Halley’s), reduced Lacaille’s observations of 515 zodiacal stars, observed with his teacher the transit of Venus in 1761, and in 1763 was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He performed most careful observations of Jupiter’s satellites and of Saturn’s rings, and found time to prepare several large works on astronomical research and the history of that science. Among them, are to be especially noted: Histoire de 1’astronomie ancienne depuis son origine jusqu’à l’établissement de TÉcole d’Alexandrie (Paris: Debure, 1775; 2nd ed., 1781, xxiv, 527 pp.); Lettres sur l’Atlantide de Platon et sur T ancienne histoire de F Asie (Paris: Debure; and London: M. Elmsly, 1779, 480 pp., maps), which were addressed to Voltaire; Histoire de F astronomie moderne, depuis la fondation de l’école d’Alexandrie, jusqu’à l’époque 1730 (Paris, 1779-82, three vols. 4to; also 1785); Traité de Fastronomie Indienne et Orientale (Paris: Debure, 1787, clxxx, 417 pp. Index). These works show extensive knowledge of the ancient world, including Hindu astronomy which in his day was practically unknown. It is obvious that H.P.B. had a very high regard for Bailly and considered him a man of very keen intuition.