Camille Flammarion (1842–1925): Founder of the Société Astronomique de France

Abstract

The long and fertile scientific career of Camille Flammarion, the founder of the Société Astronomique de France, whose centenary we are celebrating in 1987, is marked by an extraordinary variety of projects and research, covering practically all of the astronomical questions and problems that were current in his time. We may cite, as some of the most remarkable: the nine volumes of his Etudes et lectures sur l’astronomie (1867 to 1880); his Catalogue des étoiles doubles et multiples en mouvement relatif certain (1878), summarizing 28 000 observations; La planète Mars (2 vols 1892 & 1909), a priceless documentation of the first martian observations around the beginning of the 20th century; and La planète Vénus, a general discussion of observations (1899).