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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.