Arago, Dominique François (1786-1853)

Two biographical fragments: on Sir William Herschel [1738-1822] and on Jean Sylvain Bailly [1736-1793]. Author's holograph MSS. (1) This fragment is headed: 'Perfectionnement des moyens d'observation' (pp. 19-51). Arago's essay on the life and works of Herschel was published in 1843. (2) Jean Sylvain Bailly. Fragment of a biography (10 ll.). Bailly was a distinguished astronomer and wrote an excellent history of astronomy in five volumes, 1773-1787. He was a Member both of the Académie des Sciences and of the Académie Française. In the Revolution he was elected Mayor of Paris, and was President of the Constituent Assembly for a time. His royalist sympathies were against him, and after retirement from public life, he was guillotined in 1793. Produced in Paris.

c. 1840, c. 1850

1 volume pp. 19-51, 10 ll. obl. 4to. 181/2 x 24 cm. Unbound. Written on the rectos only, with many corrections.

Purchased 1933.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).