Maurice Loewy

Maurice Loewy, born on April 15, 1833, in Vienna, was a prominent French astronomer and astrophysicist. His Jewish parents relocated to Vienna in 1841 to escape the pervasive antisemitism of their hometown. Loewy began his career as an assistant at the Vienna Observatory, where he focused on celestial mechanics. However, the restrictive policies of Austria-Hungary prevented him from advancing to a senior position without renouncing his faith.

In 1860, through the influence of Karl L. Littrow, the director of the observatory and a correspondent of Urbain Le Verrier, Loewy secured a position at the Paris Observatory. This move marked a significant turning point in his career, as he became a naturalized French citizen and continued his groundbreaking work on the orbits of asteroids and comets, as well as improving the accuracy of the Connaissance des Temps.

Loewy's contributions to astronomy were substantial; he was elected to the Bureau des Longitudes in 1872 and the Académie des Sciences in 1873. In 1896, he ascended to the role of director of the Paris Observatory, where he reorganized the institution and established a department dedicated to physical astronomy. His collaboration with Pierre Puiseux resulted in the creation of L’Atlas photographique de la Lune, a comprehensive atlas of the Moon that consisted of ten thousand photographs and served as the definitive reference for lunar geography for over fifty years.

Loewy's legacy is immortalized in the names of the lunar crater Loewy and asteroid 253 Mathilde, which is believed to honor his wife. He passed away in Paris on October 15, 1907, during a government meeting, succumbing to a sudden cardiac arrest.