P.J.C. Janssen

Biography

Pierre Jules César Janssen, also known as Jules Janssen, was a French astronomer who, along with the English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer, is credited with discovering the gaseous nature of the solar chromosphere, and with some justification the element helium. Pierre Janssen studied mathematics and physics at the faculty of sciences. He taught at the Lycée Charlemagne in 1853, and in the school of architecture 1865 – 1871, but his energies were mainly devoted to various scientific missions entrusted to him. Thus in 1857 he went to Peru in order to determine the magnetic equator; in 1861–1862 and 1864, he studied telluric absorption in the solar spectrum in Italy and Switzerland; in 1867...