True Life Tuesday: Nicole-Reine Lepaute

Nicole-Reine Lepaute nee Etable de la Briere was born on January 5, 1723 in the Luxemborg Palace in Paris. He father, Jean, was a valet for Louise Elisabeth d'Orleans. Nicole was the 6th of 9 children. As a child she was described as precocious and intelligent. She was mostly self-taught and eventually read all of the books in the palace's library. Her interest in astronomy began when she saw a comet as a child. In August 1748 she married Jean-Andre Lepaute, a royal clockmaker in the palace.

Nicole met Jerome Lalande in 1753 when he was sent to inspect her husband's work on a type of pendulum for the Academie des Sciences. She would end up working with Lalande for the next 30 years. She and Lalande along with her husband released Traite d'horlogerie (Treatise of Clockmaking) under her husband's name in 1755. In 1757 she and Lelande worked with Alexis Clairount to calculate the date of the next passage of Halley's Comet, which was last seen in 1682. In 1759 Lalande became the director of Connaissance des Temps (Knowledge of the Times) and appointed Nicole as his assistant. She made many calculations such as the position of Saturn for each day from 1775-1784 and the exact time of a solar eclipse that occurred on April 1, 1764. She was forced to stop working in 1783 due to her decreasing eyesight from so many years of doing calculations.

Nicole and her husband never had children but they did adopt his nephew, Joseph Lepaute Daglet, in 1768.She trained him in astronomy and advanced mathematics. He eventually became a mathematics professor at the Paris Military School. She would spent the last 7 years of her life taking care of her husband who was terminally ill. She died in Paris on December 6, 1788.