Pons Jean-Louis

Pons was until recently the absolute champion of discovery of comets. In 1789, he was hired as the concierge of the Marseilles observatory by its director Guillaume Saint-Jacques de Silvabelle (1722-1801), a recognized specialist of the motion of comets, who had worked at the problem of the return of the Halley’s Comet. Silvabelle, who recognized Pons’s talent, gave him astronomy lessons. With a telescope he made ​​himself, Pons discovered his first comet in 1801. He was so active that he was nicknamed “the magnet of comets,” and was appointed assistant astronomer in 1813. After having discovered 23 comets in Marseilles, he was invited to Italy and became the director of the observatory of Marlia, near Lucca, where he discovered seven more comets. The Grand Duke of Tuscany then appointed him director of the observatory of Florence, where he discovered seven comets before his death.