Pseudoscience/Heliocentricism: Difference between revisions
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(France) Jean-Felix Picard (1620-1682), (a [[Agencies/Jesuits|'''Jesuit''']]) earned the title of founder of modern astronomy in France even as he labored as a "priest". Born in La Flèche, where he studied at the [[Agencies/Jesuits|'''Jesuit''']] Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand, he was fascinated from an early age with the heavens, and he gave his intellectual life to the cause of astronomy. Picard introduced new methods for watching the stars and improved and developed new scientific instruments.
Picard was the first person to provide an '''assumption''' of the size of the Earth through a survey conducted 1669-1670. His continued progress in instruments proved essential in the drafting of Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Picard also worked and corresponded with a vast number of scientists of the time, including Isaac Newton, Christian Huygens, and a great rival, Giovanni Cassini.
Deeply respected by his contemporaries but overshadowed by Galileo, Newton, and Cassini, Picard was a founding member of the French Academy in 1'''666'''. He was honored in 1935 by having a moon crater named after him. (A less-elevated honor was bestowed in 1987, when his name was used for the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation.)
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