Nicolas-Louis De la Caille (1713 - 1762)

Nicolas-Louis De la Caille

Nicolas-Louis De la Caille was a French astronomer, abbot and educator.

He studied philosophy and theology, became an abbot, but the craving for science overpowered everything, and he studied astronomy on his own. In 1736, la Caille received a place at the Paris Observatory, in 1739 was appointed professor of mathematics at Mazarini-College in Paris and built his own observatory, where he conducted astronomical observations. In 1741 Lacaille was admitted to the Académie des Sciences.

La Caille was an outstanding astronomer: he observed more than 10,000 stars in the Southern Hemisphere and named 14 of the 88 constellations. In 1752, he made an astronomical expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, where he built an observatory and conducted a huge series of observations, including the discovery and cataloging of 42 nebulae. These studies led to la Caille being called "the father of southern astronomy," and his observations from South Africa of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, combined with similar observations already made in the Northern Hemisphere, led to the calculation of more accurate values for the distances to these bodies.

On his return to Paris two years later, in 1754, he resumed his post and taught at the school of Mazarin, continuing his work at the observatory of the College of Mazarini. Among his pupils was the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier. La Caille was a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a member of the Royal Society of London. His Coelum Australe Stelliferum ("Star Catalog of the Southern Sky") was published in 1763.