Faye, Hervé

(b. St. Benoît-du-Sault, France, 1 October 1814; d. Paris, France, 4 July 1902)

astronomy, geodesy.

Son of a civil engineer, Faye entered the École Polytechnique in 1832. His vocation for astronomy emerged after a few years of work in France under the supervision of his father. He entered the Paris Observatory in 1836. While working there, under Arago’s direction, Faye discovered the periodic comet of 1843 (since known by his name) and computed its orbit. His career thereafter was manifold. He taught geodesy at the École Polytechnique as lecturer from 1848 to 1854 and became full professor in 1873; meanwhile he was professor of astronomy at Nancy. As academic administrator he was rector of the Academy at Nancy and general inspector of secondary schools. He was honored for his achievements throughout his life, beginning with his election to the Académie des Sciences at the age of thirty-three. A member of the Bureau des Longitudes, he served as president for more than twenty years.

Most of Faye’s research is contained in the more than 200 notes that he published in the Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences. These researches were essentially theoretical in character, including, among other things, an explanation of the tails of comets as well as a discussion of the discrepancies produced in normal Newtonian orbits by radiation pressure from the sun (Comptes rendus, 47 [1858], 836). He understood that meteorites follow cometary orbits and are therefore related objects (ibid., 64 [1867], 549). He improved observational techniques in astronomy, advocating the use of photography, designing a zenith telescope (ibid., 23 [1846], 872), and studying carefully refraction as the major cause of errors (ibid., 39 [1854], 381).

Faye’s theory of the sun was widely adopted. He considered the sun to be a gaseous sphere with large convective motions (ibid., 60 [1865], 89 and 138), the sunspots being holes (ibid., 61 [1865], 1082) with internal cyclonic motions (ibid., 76 [1873], 509). He also studied earth cyclones. In a book on the origin of worlds (1884) he developed and improved Laplace’s cosmological theory.

Faye also spent much effort in developing geodetic projects in France and all over the world. He first introduced an idea close to isostasy, that the figure of the earth is almost an equilibrium figure, continents being lighter than the crust under the oceans (ibid., 90 [1880], 1185).

Faye’s ideas were widely publicized during his lifetime. Some of them remain valid to this day, while others contributed significantly to the development of science in his time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Faye’s most important works are listed in the text. His theory of the sun is described in Annuaire du Bureau des longitudes (1873), p. 443, and (1874) p. 407; his theory of comets is in the same publication, (1883), p. 717. See also Cours d’astronomie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882), which includes his most important ideas, and Sur l’origine des mondes (Paris, 1884) for his cosmological theory.

II. Secondary Literature. Several notices on Faye may be found in Annuaire du Bureau des longitudes for 1903.

J. Kovalevsky