Book Description

Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) was a French astronomer and author. He is commonly referred to as Camille Flammarion. Camille Flammarion was born in Montigny-le-Roi, Haute-Marne, France. He was the brother of Ernest Flammarion, founder of the Groupe Flammarion publishing house. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and several works about Spiritualism and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. He was a founder and the first president of the Societe Astronomique de France, which originally had its own independent journal, BSAF (Bulletin de la Societe astronomique de France), first published in 1887. In 1895, after 13 volumes of L'Astronomie and 8 of BSAF, the two merged, making L'Astronomie the Bulletin of the Societe. He was the first to suggest the names Triton and Amalthea for moons of Neptune and Jupiter, respectively, although these names were not officially adopted until many decades later.