[Gate of the Palace at Potsdam.]
Engraved by B. Holl.
DELAMBRE.
From the original by Boilly
in the possession of Delambre’s Family at Amiens.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
DELAMBRE.
The time is not yet come when a memoir of the personal life of Delambre could be attempted with any chance of interesting the reader. The accounts which have been published from authentic sources are very meagre; and, as may be supposed, this country is not the place in which better can be obtained. We must therefore content ourselves with offering a slight table of the principal events of his public career, and proceed to give some account of his extraordinary labours.
Jean Baptist Joseph Delambre was born September 19, 1749, at or near Amiens. He studied under Delille at the college of Plessis, applying himself particularly to the learned languages. His accurate and ready knowledge of Greek afterwards proved an element of no mean importance in the merit of his ‘History of Astronomy.’
Though the extent of his works would give the idea of a very long life applied to one subject in all its bearings, yet Delambre was more than thirty years old before he turned his attention to astronomy. It is said that he accidentally entered the room where Lalande was delivering a lecture on some part of that science, while either waiting for or coming from another on the Greek language. Be that as it may, he commenced his studies under the celebrated astronomer just named before 1785, in which year the calculation of the longitudes and latitudes of the stars in Mayer’s Catalogue, by Delambre, was published, in the ‘Connaissance des Tems’ for 1788. In 1789 he published Tables of Jupiter and Saturn; and in 1790 Tables of Uranus, which gained the prize of the Academy of Sciences; at the same time he was actively engaged in correcting, by observation, the existing tables of right ascensions. In 1791 he published new Tables of Jupiter’s Satellites, which Lalande calls “Un des plus grands travaux astronomiques qu’on ait faits.”
In 1792 Delambre aided Lalande in calculating the planetary tables for the third edition of his ‘Astronomy;’ and was appointed a member of the Institute, and also of the Commission for measuring a Degree of the Meridian. Of his share in this operation we shall presently speak. In the same year he published his first Tables of the Sun, and a second set in 1806, together with Tables of Refraction. In 1817 he again constructed Tables of Jupiter’s Satellites. In 1795 he was appointed to the Bureau des Longitudes; in 1802 he was made Inspecteur Général des Etudes, in which capacity he formed the Lyceums of Moulins and Lyons. In 1803 he became perpetual secretary of the class of mathematics in the Institute, and the various éloges which are found in the Memoirs of that body till 1822 are from his pen. In 1807 he succeeded Lalande as Professor at the College of France; in 1808 he was appointed Treasurer of the University, and in 1821, Officer of the Legion of Honour. He died August 19, 1822, at the age of seventy-three.