Name Jean-Philippe Cheseaux Discovered Great Comet of 1744 | Role Astronomer | |
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Died November 30, 1751, Paris, France | ||
Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux (May 4, 1718 in Lausanne – November 30, 1751) was an astronomer from Lausanne in Switzerland. In 1746 he presented a list of nebulae, eight of which were his own new discoveries, to the Academie Francaise des Sciences. The list was noted privately by Le Gentil in 1759, but only made public in 1892 by Guillaume Bigourdan. Cheseaux was among the first to state, in its modern form, what would later be known as Olbers' paradox (that, if the universe is infinite, the night sky should be bright).
De Cheseaux discovered two comets:
De Cheseaux also did some little-known research into Biblical chronology, attempting to date the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth by analysing astronomical observations in the Book of Daniel. This work was published posthumously in Memoires posthumes de M. de Cheseaux (1754).