Born Corfu, Greece, 20 July 1909
Died Greece, 3 January 1969
Greek astronomer J. H. Focas was one of the last great visual observers of the planets. From the National Observatory, Athens, he gradually migrated to France’s Pic-du-Midi and Meudon observatories (where at the end of his life he created the International Astronomical Union’s Planetary Photographic Data Center) under the influence of Bernard Lyot . Focas is best known for his exhaustive study of Mars: photometric, polarimetric, and cartographic.
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Dollfus, Audouin (1970). “John Henry Focas, 1909–1969.” Icarus 12: 498-499.
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Hockey, T. (2014). Focas, John Henry. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_465
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