author
P. (Pierre Henri) Puiseux
1855–1928
Best known for helping create one of the first great photographic atlases of the Moon, this French astronomer brought sharp observation and a mountaineer’s eye for landscape to lunar science. His work at the Paris Observatory helped turn the Moon into a world that could be studied in striking visual detail.
1 Audiobook
La terre et la lune: forme extérieure et structure interne
by P. (Pierre Henri) Puiseux
About the author
Born in Paris in 1855, Pierre Henri Puiseux was the son of mathematician and astronomer Victor Puiseux. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure and later joined the Paris Observatory, where he built a career as a careful observer and specialist in lunar astronomy.
Puiseux is especially remembered for his collaboration with Maurice Loewy on the Atlas photographique de la Lune, a landmark photographic atlas that gave astronomers an unusually detailed view of the Moon’s surface. He also worked on the large international sky-mapping effort known as the Carte du Ciel, and wrote on the Moon’s motion, surface features, and internal structure.
Outside astronomy, Puiseux was also known as an alpinist, and that love of mountains nicely echoes the terrain-focused curiosity that shaped his lunar studies. He died in 1928, leaving behind work that helped make modern selenography—the close study of the Moon—far more precise and visual.