François Gonnessiat
Encyclopedia
| 915 Cosette 915 Cosette 915 Cosette is an S-type asteroid belonging to the Flora family of Main Belt asteroids. Its rotation period is 4.445 hours.-External links:*... |
December 14, 1918 |
| 931 Whittemora 931 Whittemora -External links:*... |
March 19, 1920 |
François Gonnessiat (May 22, 1856 (Nurieux-Volognat
Nurieux-Volognat
Nurieux-Volognat is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.-Population:-References:*...
)–October 18, 1934) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
.
He worked at the Observatory of Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
. In 1889 he won the Lalande Prize
Lalande Prize
The Lalande Prize was an award for scientific advances in astronomy, given from 1802 through 1970 by the French Academy of Sciences.The prize was named for, and endowed by, astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1801...
for astronomy from the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
; 1901 became director of the Quito (Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
) Observatory for the purpose of making geodetic
Geodesy
Geodesy , also named geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space. Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal...
measurements. He became a well known and respected member of the academic scene of the city, where a street is named after him. He was director of the Algiers Observatory
Algiers Observatory
The Algiers Observatory was built in the late nineteenth century in the Algiers suburb of Bouzaréah. It participated in the Astrographic Catalogue project, taking the zone between -2 and +4 degrees to expose 1,260 plates between the years 1891 and 1911...
from 1908 to 1931, where one of his colleagues was Benjamin Jekhovsky.
He extensively observed comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
s, and also discovered a couple of asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
s. The asteroid 1177 Gonnessia
1177 Gonnessia
1177 Gonnessia is an outer main-belt asteroid discovered on November 24, 1930 by Boyer, L. at Algiers.- External links :*...
was named in his honour.
Obituary
- Obs 57 (1931) 386 (incorrectly says he was director of Algiers Observatory only until 1916, see)