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Concept
Jean Sylvain Bailly
Summary
Jean Sylvain Bailly (ʒɑ̃ silvɛ̃ baji; 15 September 1736 – 12 November 1793) was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, and political leader of the early part of the French Revolution. He presided over the Tennis Court Oath, served as the mayor of Paris from 1789 to 1791, and was ultimately guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
Born in Paris, Bailly was the son of Jacques Bailly, an artist and supervisor of the Louvre, and the grandson of Nicholas Bailly, also an artist and court painter. As a child he originally intended to follow in his family's footsteps and pursue a career in the arts. He became deeply attracted to science, however, particularly astronomy, by the influence of Nicolas de Lacaille. An excellent student with a "particularly retentive memory and inexhaustible patience", he calculated an orbit for the next appearance of Halley's Comet (in 1759), and correctly reduced Lacaille's observations of 515 stars. He participated in the construction of an observatory at the Louvre. These achievements along with others got him elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1763. In the years prior to the French Revolution, Bailly's distinctive reputation as a French astronomer led to his recognition and admiration by the European scientific community. Due to his popularity amongst the scientific groups, in 1777, Bailly received Benjamin Franklin as a guest in his house in Chaillot.
Bailly published his Essay on The Theory of the Satellites of Jupiter in 1766. The essay was an expansion of a presentation he had made to the academy in 1763. He later released the noteworthy dissertation On the Inequalities of Light of the Satellites of Jupiter in 1771. In 1778, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Bailly gained a high literary reputation thanks to his Eulogies for King Charles V of France, Lacaille, Molière, Pierre Corneille and Gottfried Leibniz, which were issued in collected form in 1770 and 1790. He was admitted to the Académie française on 26 February 1784 and to the Académie des Inscriptions in 1785.
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