1. Nicole-Reine Lepaute was a member of the Scientific Academie de Beziers.
16 Facts About Nicole-Reine Lepaute
1. 2.
The asteroid 7720 Nicole-Reine Lepaute is named in her honour, as is the lunar crater Nicole-Reine Lepaute.
3.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute's father had worked for the royal family for a long time, both in the service of the duchess de Berry and her sister Louise.
4.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute stayed up all night "devouring" books and read every book in the library, with Jerome Lalande saying of her that even as a child "she had too much spirit not to be curious".
5.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute became eager to learn about it and started her curiosity journey when she started studying about comets.
6.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute's marriage gave her the freedom to exercise her scientific skill.
7.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute met Jerome Lalande, with whom she would work for thirty years, in 1753 when he was called as a representative of the Academie des Sciences to inspect her husband's work on a pendulum of a new type.
8.
Lalande sent in another clock that was made by Nicole-Reine Lepaute and went as the representative of the Academy of Science to observe this clock.
9.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute believed that women were capable of pursuing ambitious scientific work and that their intellectual pursuits were not a threat to the social order.
10.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute believed that women were best suited to assisting male researchers rather than leading their own research projects.
11.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute emphasized the importance of women's roles as wives and mothers, and saw their scientific work as being compatible with their familial duties.
12.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute did calculations from the computing plans Lalande prepared until 1774 and made various contributions to the almanac, including calculations on a 1762 comet, as well as a table of parallactic angles.
13.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute calculated the position of Saturn for each day of the year from 1775 to 1784 for the seventh volume, published in 1774, and she calculated on her own the daily positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets for the eighth volume.
14.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute's work went largely unappreciated and unrewarded despite its importance.
15.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute nonetheless became a member of the distinguished Scientific Academy of Beziers in 1761, for which she calculated the ephemeris of the transit of Venus this year.
16.
Nicole-Reine Lepaute travelled south to the Terra Australis in 1773, became a professor of mathematics at Paris' Military School and became inducted in the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1785.