Cassini, Jean-Dominique

Alternate Name

Cassini IV; Cassini, Giovanni Domenico

Born Paris, France, 30 June 1748

Died Thury near Clermont, Oise, France, 18 October 1845

Last of the Cassini dynasty at the Paris Observatory, J.-D. Cassini was an administrator, a geodesist, and a cartographer. He was the son of César Cassini de Thury . Educated at the Collège du Plessis, Paris, and the Oratorian Collège at Juilly, Jean-Dominique studied under the physicist J. A. Nollet, the mathematician C. Mauduit, and the astronomers Giacomo Maraldi and Jean Chappe d’Auteroche . He was elected adjoint by the Académie des sciences on 23 July 1770, becoming associé in 1785. Cassini was the editor of Chappe d’Auteroche’s posthumous Voyage en Californie pour l’observation du passage de Vénus sur le disque du soleil, le 3 juin 1769(Paris 1772), and formally succeeded his father as director of the Paris Observatory in 1784. He was married to Claude-Marie-Louise de la Myre-Mory for 18 years. Her death in 1791 left him with five young...