JACQUES

CASSINI (1677–1756)  , son of Domenico Cassini, was born at the Paris observatory on the 8th of February 1677 . Admitted at the age of seventeen to membership of the French Academy of Sciences, he was elected in 1696 a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and became maitre des comptes in 1706 . Having succeeded to his father's position at the observatory in 1712, he measured in 1713 the arc of the meridian from Dunkirk to Perpignan, and published the results in a volume entitled De la grandeur et de la figure de la terre (1720) (see GEODESY) . He wrote besides Elemens d'astronomie (1740), and died on the 18th of April 1756 at Thury, near Clermont . The first tables of the satellites of Saturn were supplied by him in 17,6 . See C . Wolf, Histoire de l'observatoire de Paris; Max . Marie, Histoire des sciences, vii . 214; R . Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p . 451; J . C .

Houzeau, Bibl. astronomique; J .

Delambre, Histoire de l'astronomie au X VII-le siecle, pp . 250-275 (unfairly depreciatory) ; J . F . Montucla, Hist. des mathematiques, iv . 145, 248 .