French astronomer, freemason and writer, who published a corrected edition of Edmond Halley’s tables in 1759, with a history of Halley’s Comet whose return in that year he had helped Alexis Clairaut to calculate. In 1762 Joseph-Nicolas Delisle resigned the chair of astronomy in the Collège de France in Lalande’s favour. The duties were discharged by Lalande for forty-six years. His house became an astronomical seminary, and amongst his pupils were Delambre, Giuseppe Piazzi, Pierre Méchain, and his own nephew Michel Lalande. By his publications in connection with the transit of Venus of 1769 he won great fame. However, his difficult personality lost him some popularity.
In 1766, Lalande, with Helvetius, founded the “Les Sciences” lodge in Paris, and received its recognition from Grand Orient de France in 1772. In 1776, he changed its name to Les Neuf Soeurs, and arranged for Benjamin Franklin to be chosen as the first worshipful master.
Although his investigations were conducted with diligence rather than genius, Lalande’s career was an eminent one. As a lecturer and writer he helped popularise astronomy. His planetary tables, into which he introduced corrections for mutual perturbations, were the best available up to the end of the 18th century. In 1801, he endowed the Lalande Prize, administered by the French Academy of Sciences, for advances in astronomy. Pierre-Antoine Véron, the young astronomer who for the first time in history determined the size of the Pacific Ocean from east to west, was Lalande’s disciple.
He died on 4 April 1807, aged 74, in Paris.
Link to Wikipedia biography