Bernard Lyot

Updated on Oct 12, 2024

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Citizenship France Name Bernard Lyot Nationality French Role Astronomer		Fields Astronomy Education University of Paris Alma mater University of Paris Known for Sun

Born February 27, 1897Paris, France ( 1897-02-27 ) Died April 2, 1952, Cairo, Egypt Notable awards Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Awards Bruce Medal, Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Henry Draper Medal

Observatório Solar Bernard Lyot

Bernard Ferdinand Lyot (27 February 1897, in Paris – 2 April 1952, in Cairo) was a French astronomer.

Bernard Lyot The Bruce Medalists Bernard Lyot

VIT3D - Smartphone : Virtual Interactive Telescope in 3D - Demo at Novela'2013 – Toulouse

Biography

His interest in astronomy started in 1914. He soon acquired a 4-inch (100 mm) telescope and soon upgraded to a 6-inch (150 mm). From graduation in 1918 until 1929, he worked as a demonstrator at the École Polytechnique and studied engineering, physics, and chemistry at the University of Paris.

From 1920 until his death he worked for the Meudon Observatory, where in 1930 he earned the title of Joint Astronomer of the Observatory. After gaining the title, he earned a reputation of being an expert of polarized and monochromatic light. Throughout the 1930s, he labored to perfect the coronagraph, which he invented to observe the corona without having to wait for a solar eclipse. In 1938, he showed a movie of the corona in action to the International Astronomical Union. In 1939, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. He became Chief Astronomer at the Meudon Observatory in 1943 and received the Bruce Medal in 1947.

Lyot was the President of the Société astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1945-1947.

He suffered a heart attack while returning from an eclipse expedition in Sudan and died on 2 April 1952, at the age of 55.