Person: Savary, Felix

Félix Savary worked on electromagnetism and electrodynamics.

Savary also served as librarian at the Bureau des Longitudes from 1823 to 1829.
Savary also developed a theorem (named after him) on the curvature of a roulette, the curve traced out by a point on a fixed curve which rolls on a second curve.
The star x Ursae Majoris is a double star and Savary demonstrated that the two stars move in elliptical orbits with the centre of gravity at the focus of the ellipses.
Priority in that field, however, must go to Savary, who gave, in Connaissance des Temps for 1830 (which according to its title page was published in 1827), a description of a method of calculating orbits for double stars.
In fact, Sir John Herschel, whose orbit was, on his own admission, not nearly such a good match, complained with good reason that Savary had cheated - not Sir John's word: that is my précis of the gentlemanly circumlocution that occupies nearly a whole page (his paragraph 64) - by choosing to solve data that were only approximately the observed ones!

Born 4 October 1797, Paris, France. Died 15 July 1841, Estagel (near Perpignan), Franc.

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Astronomy

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O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive