Joseph-Nicolas De Lille

2026-01-21 09:30:54

Joseph-Nicolas De Lille (French: Joseph-Nicolas De L'Isle; Paris, France, April 4, 1688 – September 11, 1768, ibid.) was a French astronomer and cartographer. Delil's astronomical works are devoted to observational astronomy, astrometry, and celestial mechanics. He jbserved solar and lunar eclipses, the covering of stars and planets by the Moon, studied sunspots, measured the diameters of the Sun, Moon and planets. He was engaged in the organization, precalculations and processing of observations to determine the parallaxes of the Sun and the Moon. Together with G. Heinzius, he observed comets (1742, 1744), constructed theories of their movement. Gave a detailed analysis of all publications on the theory of comets after I. Newton and E. Halley. He developed a method for determining the orbits of comets. He was engaged in some issues of optics, in particular the diffraction of light; studied diffraction from bodies of different shapes, discovered a number of important regularities of this phenomenon. He paid great attention to the study and translation into European languages ​​of the best works of Eastern scientists, in particular Ulugbek. He educated a brilliant constellation of students, including L. Godin, J. J. Lalande, and S. Messier. Professor of astronomy (1725), foreign honorary member (1747-1748) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. A member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1714), a member of the London Royal Society (1724), the Berlin Academy of Sciences and many other academies of sciences and scientific societies.