Jean Bosler

Personal

Vocation

French astronomer and author of several books who discovered in 1908 in the spectrum of Comet Morehouse the spectral lines of ionized nitrogen, which was the first evidence of that element in comets. Much of his research was on the physical properties and orbits of comets. In 1916, he published an analysis of the circular form of lunar craters as caused by the impact of meteors. In 1923 Bosler was named director of Marseille Observatory, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1948. Simultaneously with his directorship, he taught at the University of Marseille from 1923 to 1948. Bosler made important contributions to the theory of the evolution of stars and published the first textbook in French that dealt with the then recent discoveries of Hubble and the work on optical phenomena of such physicists as Michelson, Fabry and Perot. He died on 25 September 1973 in Marseille, aged 95. Link to Wikipedia biography