Raphaël Bischoffsheim

Biography

Bischoffsheim’s father, Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim, was born in Mainz in 1800. An early orphan, he had to leave high school to work at the bank Hayum Salomon Goldschmidt. In 1820, he leaves Frankfurt to create his own bank in Amsterdam. In 1822 he married the sister of Benedict Hayum Goldschmidt, Amelia. In 1850 the family moved permanently to Paris where he opened one of the three branches of his bank.

Raphael had already been sent to Paris by his father in 1842 to study at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufacture. After graduation he was appointed inspector of the railway line in northern Italy, belonging to his father. He worked there until 1873, when he took over from his father the management of the family banking group. On April 24 1880 he obtained the French nationality.

In 1873, Bischoffsheim commissioned architect Charles Garnier to build a villa in Bordighera, which was then called Villa Bischoffsheim and be finished in 1875. Bischoffsheim, which was a very generous person, had started investing and making plans to improve the city. What was closest to his heart was the construction of an observatory on the Mount Bego. Unfortunately, the municipalities proved unreceptive to the proposal of the German banker and Bischoffsheim, who had already had problems with money loaned to the city for improving the Via Romana, he decided to move his center of interests back to France.

His passion for astronomy had already driven him to invest in the observatories of Paris, of Montsouris and of the Pic du Midi. When Bordighera did not accept his proposal for an observatory, Bischoffsheim built one in Nice on Mont-Gros, providing it with all the latest equipment and making it a center of excellence. The observatory was opened in October 1887. His contribution to science and society was such that Bischoffsheim received from the French Government the French Legion of Honor and in 1889, at the Universal Exposition of Paris, two gold medals: one for the Nice observatory and another for the professional school of the Boulevard Bourdon in Paris.

In 1881, he was chosen to represent the district of Nice in the Chamber of Deputies, but not wanting to join any party, he was not re-elected in 1885. Instead, he was re-elected in 1889 for Nice and, in 1893, for Puget-Théniers.

In 1890 he was elected a free member of the French Academy of Sciences