Picard, Jean

Jean Picard, (born July 21, 1620, La Flèche, Fr.—died July 12, 1682, Paris), French astronomer who first accurately measured the length of a degree of a meridian (longitude line) and from that computed the size of the Earth.

Picard became professor of astronomy at the Collège de France, Paris, in 1655. His measurement of the Earth was used by Sir Isaac Newton to verify his theory of gravitation. In 1671 Picard went to the observatory of the noted 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe at Hven Island, Sweden, to determine its exact location so that Brahe’s observations could be more precisely compared with those made elsewhere. He brought back copies of the originals of Brahe’s principal work.

Picard is also credited with the introduction of telescopic sights and the use of pendulum clocks as contributions to greater precision in astronomical observations. In 1675 he made the first recorded observation of barometric light, the light that appears in the vacuum above the mercury in a barometer when the barometer is moved about. In 1679 he founded and became editor of La Connaissance des temps ou des mouvements célestes (“Knowledge of Time or the Celestial Motions”), the first national astronomical ephemeris, or collection of tables giving the positions of celestial bodies at regular intervals.