MOUCHEZ, AMEDEE ERNEST BARTHELEMY (1821-1892)

This article appears in Volume V18, Page 932 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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MOUCHEZ, AMEDEE ERNEST BARTHELEMY (1821-1892) , French astronomer, was born at Madrid of French parents on the 24th of August 1821. At the age of sixteen he entered the naval school at Brest, and after serving with distinction in various ships, was appointed in 1856 to the command of the " Bisson." Towards the close of the Franco-Prussian War he made an admirable defence of Brest, and his organization of the French expedition to the island of St Paul to observe the transit of Venus in 1874 obtained his election to the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Sciences and his promotion as

commander

COMMANDER

of the Legion of Honour. On the 27th of June 1878 he succeeded Urbain Leverrier as director of the National

Observatory

OBSERVATORY

of Paris, and was raised to the rank of rear-admiral. The fourteen years of his directorship were marked by a

great

GREAT

increase in the activity of the institution. The

observatory

OBSERVATORY

grounds were enlarged; two powerful instruntits of the novel kind known as coude. equatorials were installed; a spectroscopic department was established, and the gigantic task of re-observing all Lalande's stars was completed. He published twenty-one volumes of Annales, as well as the first two volumes of the

great

GREAT

Catalogue de l'observatoire de Paris; founded the Bulletin astronomique, and set on foot two schools of

practical

PRACTICAL

astronomy, one at Paris, the other at Montsouris, for the

special

SPECIAL

instruction of naval and military officers, explorers and surveyors. His most memorable

work

WORK

, however, was the inauguration of international operations for charting the heavens. The advances in stellar photography made by Paul and Prosper

Henry

and others suggested to him the magnificent idea of obtaining, through the collaboration of astronomers in all parts of the world, an
autographic picture of the entire sphere containing more than fifty million stars, which should faithfully record in future ages the state of the sky at the end of the 19th century. Although he did not live to see its completion, he had the

satisfaction

SATISFACTION (Lat. salisfacerc, to satisfy)

of knowing that the ultimate success of this vast

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

was assured. He died suddenly at his country seat at Wissous, near Antony, on the 25th of June 1892.
See Month. Notices Roy. Asir. Society, liii. 226; Observatory, xv. 305 (D. Klumpke) ; Nature, xlvi. 253; Rapport annuel sur l'observatoire de Paris pour l'annee 1892. (A. M. C.)

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