"R.H. van Gent" wrote: > Lefebvre appears to be the same person as the Jean Lefévre mentioned by > Daumas.
In addition to what I wrote yesterday, I found some more information on the internet. The name Lefebvre appears to be fairly common in France and there seems to be no justification in emending it to Lefebure. Lalande everywhere uses the name Lefebvre though in the index he also gives the alternative form Le Fevre. The Galileo Project has a concise English biography that can be viewed at: http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/lefevre.html However, according to this site the astronomer Lefebvre was not the same person as the Parisian instrument maker. The best and most informative source on Lefebvre appears to be the following publication by Tissot: Amédée Tissot, Étude biographique sur Jean Le Fèvre, ouvrier tisserand, astronome, membre de l'Académie des Sciences (J.-B. Dumoulin, Paris, 1872). of which the complete text can be viewed at: http://www.bmlisieux.com/normandie/jelefevr.htm According to Tissot (who cites Lalande as well as many other earlier sources) there is no doubt that the astronomer and the instrument maker were the same person. The Tissot reference was mentioned on the Galileo Project web site but was not consulted. ======================================================== * Robert H. van Gent * Tel/Fax: 00-31-30-2720269 * * Zaagmolenkade 50 * * * 3515 AE Utrecht * E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * The Netherlands * * ******************************************************** * Homepage: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/homepage.htm * ========================================================
