Jean Dragesco (1997)
Jean Dragesco at his 100th anniversary!
Jean Dragesco was born on the 27th of April 1920 at Cluj. When he was only 15 years old, he was already observing the Moon through a self-made 2″ telescope. Around the same age, he read an outstanding number of astronomy books written in French and this informational pathway made him acquire new scientific knowledge, the building blocks of his future and dedicated life for science.
At 17 years old, he built another telescope, a 4″ Newtonian, which had a mirror made in Stuttgart, Germany He built another mirror, still spherical, but 6″, and finished a good Altazimuthal Newtonian telescope. At 19 years old, he became "officially" a contributor to "Mars" section of Société Astronomique de France. In the same year, Jean Dragesco founded the first organization for the young astronomers in Romania called the Astronomical Society for Young Astronomers and he became the editor of the monthly publication Urania. The next year, he founded the Microscopy Association and started to publish the Micron journal.
Jean Dragesco left Romania for France when he was 21 years old. His father, Ion Dragu, was a philosopher, writer and diplomat; he worked for the Romanian Embassy in Paris as the Head of Press Office, during that time, Eugène Ionesco was Press and Cultural Secretary within the institution. Once in France, an excellent 3″ telescope came to being out of his own hands. After he became a member of Société Astronomique de France and an active observer of "Mars" section there, he got the permission to do observations withe the 6″ and 7.5″ (152 and 190 mm) telescopes at Paris Observatory. It is also the moment when he started to collaborate with several very knowledgeable and dedicated astronomers who latter on became professionals in the field.
At 22 years old, he discovered a gap between the rings B and C of planet Saturn. However, even if the same discovery was made a few weeks later by the distinguished French astronomer Bernard Lyot, the same who invented the coronagraph, the new discovery was attributed to him and not to Dragesco and it is today known as the ''Lyot division".
Published on: Jan 26, 2020
