Johann Kies

Born in Tübingen, Kies worked in Berlin in 1751 alongside Jérôme Lalande in order to make observations on the lunar parallax in concert with those of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope.

From 1742 to 1754, at the recommendation of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, he was made professor of mathematics at Berlin's Academy of Sciences and astronomer at its observatory.

His reports from this time include De la Situation la plus avantageuse des planètes pour découvrir les irrégularités de leurs mouvemens[1], Sur les Éclipses des étoiles fixes par la lune[2], and Description d'un instrument qui se trouve à l'observatoire de Berlin [3] Archived 2007-06-13 at the Wayback Machine.

They serve primarily to understand, if the theories on the Sun and the Moon are well or badly ascertained in the astronomical tables, and can either confirm them, or give us a need to reform them.

Kies is also the author of a work on lunar influences: De influxu lunae in partes terrae mobiles (Tübingen, 1769).