BornParis, France, 14 September 1724
DiedParis, France, 8 March 1803
Edme Jeaurat was an observational astronomer and an editor of the Connaissance des temps. He was the son of an engraver of the king, his mother the daughter of Sébastien Leclerc. Etienne Jeaurat, his uncle, who would become a painter for the queen, taught Jeaurat to draw. A friend of the family, Lieutaud, astronomer of the Académie des sciences, taught him mathematics. Thanks to his artistic training, Jeaurat received a medal from the Academy of Painting at the age of 22 and, in 1750, published an “Essai de perspective à l’usage des artistes.”
But Jeaurat was now more interested in mathematics than in drawing. In 1749, as a geographer-engineer, he worked on the Carte de France project under the direction of César Cassini de Thury . In 1753 he was appointed teacher of mathematics at the Military School, then in a temporary establishment at Vincennes. There he met Joseph-Jérôme Lalande, who steered him to astronomy.
Jeau...
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Selected References
Bailly, J. S. (1792). Histoire de l’astronomie moderne depuis la fondation d’Alexandrie. Vol. 3. Paris: Debure.
Bigourdan, G. (1887). “Histoire des observatoires de l’École militaire.” Bulletin astronomique 4: 497–504.
Delambre, J. B. J. (1827). Histoire de l’astronomie du dix-huitième siècle. Paris: Bachelier.
Lalande, J. (1804). Connaissance des Temps an XV : 337.
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Dumont, S. (2014). Jeaurat, Edme-Sébastien. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_718
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