Guillaume Le Gentil

Guillaume Le Gentil was born on 11[1] or 12 September 1725[2][a] in Coutances and first intended to enter the church before turning to astronomy when inspired by a lecture by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.

He was part of the international collaborative project organized by Mikhail Lomonosov to measure the distance to the Sun, by observing the transit of Venus at different points on the earth.

[3] He finally managed to gain passage on a frigate that was bound for India's Coromandel Coast, and he sailed in March 1761 with the intention of observing the transit from Pondicherry.

By the time it finally got close to Pondicherry, the captain learned that the British had occupied the city,[3] so the frigate was obliged to return to Isle de France.

[3] Encountering hostility from the Spanish authorities there, he headed back to Pondicherry,[3] which had been restored to France by peace treaty in 1763, where he arrived in March 1768.

He finally arrived in Paris in October 1771, having been away for eleven years, only to find that he had been declared legally dead and been replaced in the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Le Gentil is the subject of a novel by Antoine Laurain Les Caprices d'un astre, published in 2022, and translated into English in 2023 as An Astronomer in Love .