Louise du Pierry

Louise du Pierry or Dupiery, née Elisabeth Louise Felicité Pourra de la Madeleine^[1] (1746 – fl. 1807), was a French astronomer and professor.

Louise du Pierry was a student of Jerome de Lalande in 1779. She was a member of the Académie des Sciences de Béziers.

In 1789, she became the first female professor at the Sorbonne university in Paris as the leader of the Cours d’astronomie ouvert pour les dames et mis à leur portée for female students. The course was a huge success, despite many student fearing at first the subject matter would be too difficult for women.^[2] She predicted eclipses by collecting historical data over the past century. She computed tables for the length of day and night and assembled refraction tables in right ascension and declination for the latitude of Paris.^[2] She published her work in 1799.

The year of her death is unknown, but she was still alive in 1807. Jerome De Lalande dedicated his work Astronomie des Dames (1790),^[3] to her, where she is lauded for her talent, taste, and courage in the field of science.

See also

• Nicole-Reine Lepaute

References

• Chronology of women's history by Kirstin Olsen
• "Astronomes françaises du siècle des lumières à l'ère spatiale", calendar with short biographies (French)

1. ↑ (French) Jean Pierre Poirier, Histoire des femmes de science en France: du Moyen-Âge à la Révolution. Pygmalion, 2002, p. 161 ISBN 9782857047896
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (1986). Women in Science: antiquity through the nineteenth century. Boston: Massechussets Institute of Technology. p. 148. 
3. ↑ Astronomie des dames, p. 6 (1817)

Sources