Charles-Louis Largeteau, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetCharles-Louis Largeteau
French astronomer
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Pays de la Loire, France
About Charles-Louis Largeteau
- Charles-Louis Largeteau (1791–1857) was a French physicist and astronomer.
- He was born in Mouilleron-en-Pareds in the Vendée into a poor family.
- His father, a gunner, died in the 1793 Battle of Le Mans.
- He was taken in by an uncle in Fontenay-le-Comte, and excelled at school there, moving to grammar school in Poitiers.
- He studied then at the École Polytechnique.
- In 1813, he joined the Geographical Engineer Corps, where he worked mapping France.In 1825, he participated, alongside John Herschel in a joint French-British governmental study of the difference in longitudes between the observatories of Paris and Greenwich.
- In 1829, he entered the Bureau des Longitudes and, in 1832, became the secretary-librarian of the Paris Observatory and studied geodesy with François Arago.
- He both edited and submitted to the Connaissance des Temps, the astronomical ephemerides used by many navigators, geographers and astronomers of the time.
- He developed a method of calculating tables to determine the phases of the moon over much longer durations than before (over 30 centuries).
- Presented at the French Academy of Sciences, it earned admission as a Free Academician on December 13, 1847.
- This work, in concert with a Xia dynasty document preserved in a Chinese classic, the Book of Documents, allowed the calculation of the date of a solar eclipse recorded during the reign of Zhong Kang.He was appointed a Chavalier of the Legion of Honour. He died aged 66 in Pouzauges in the Vendée in 1857.
- He had one daughter.
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