Renée Canavaggia


Renée Canavaggia, was a French astrophysicist and translator.

Early life and family

Canavaggia was born in Castelsarrasin, France, to Louise Patry of Limoges and Jerome Canavaggia, a Corsican magistrate. She was the youngest of three daughters; her older sisters were :fr:Marie Canavaggia|Marie and :fr:Jeanne Laganne|Jeanne. She studied philosophy at the University of Montpellier and then went to Paris with her sister Marie, staying in a flat at the :fr:Square de Port-Royal|Square de Port-Royal for a number of years. She then oriented her studies towards mathematics.

Career

In early 1930 she became a trainee at the Observatoire de Paris. Amongst other partnerships, she worked with astronomer and mathematician Henri Mineur on numerical methods and with astronomers Daniel Barbier and Daniel Chalonge on stellar classification. Between 1936 and 1940, she was works director at the office of stellar statistics of :fr:l'Institut d'astrophysique de Paris of Paris of which Chalonge was a founder member. From 1943 to 1945, she worked on the project to produce a celestial map of the entire sky.
She was a secretary then an organising committee member of the International Astronomical Union.

Scientific publications