Camille
Flammarion was a French astronomer. His full name is sometimes (rarely)
given as Nicolas Camille Flammarion.
He
was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular
science works about astronomy. He also published the magazine
L'Astronomie. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge,
France.
He
was a founder and the first president of the Société
Astronomique de France.
He
was the first to suggest the names Triton and Amalthea for moons
of Neptune and Jupiter, respectively, although these names were
not officially adopted until many decades later.
His
second wife was Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion. Despite his scientific
background, or perhaps even because of it, he had an interest
in spiritualism and reincarnation. This influenced some of his
science fiction. Other than that his writing about other worlds
adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory
and astronomy.
The
enigmatic "Flammarion Woodcut" first appeared in an
1888 Flammarion publication. |
