Жан Шарль Узео де Леэ: Астроном, журналист және саяхатшы өмірі

Belgian astronomer and journalist

Jean Charles Houzeau de Lehaie (October 7, 1820 – July 12, 1888) was a Belgian astronomer and journalist. A French speaker, he moved to New Orleans after getting in trouble for his politics in Belgium. In the U. S. he continued his journalistic, astronomical, and political pursuits. He was an abolitionist and joined with unionists in Texas before the American Civil War. In New Orleans he worked with Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez at the newspapers he founded in the 1860s. Houzeau migrated to Jamaica in the postwar years. After reinstatement from an observatory in Brussels, he returned to Europe to work. He came back to Texas for an astronomical event. He published stirring memoirs and other accounts of his adventures and contacts during his travels, as well as several works on astronomical subjects.

Houzeau was born in 1820 in Havré (a small city near Mons); at the time it was within the Netherlands, and was later included in the independent nation of Belgium. From 1842, he worked as a voluntary assistant at the Brussels Observatory and began writing papers. He eventually became the observatory's director. He travelled frequently during his career, to Paris, the United Kingdom, United States, Mexico, and Jamaica. After being removed from the Belgian Royal Observatory for "outspoken political views", Houzeau migrated to the United States. In Texas by 1858, he first worked as a surveyor. He moved to Uvalde, where he organized early scientific expeditions. He believed in the abolition of slavery and aided the escape of some notable unionists from San Antonio before the American Civil War. He soon fled to Mexico, disguised as a Mexican laborer for his escape. Later in New Orleans, when the city had been taken by Federal forces, he worked with Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a physician who founded the bilingual New Orleans Tribune La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans in 1864. During a period of fierce intraparty rivalries, Roudanez lost outside support and the newspaper closed after the election in 1868 of a Northern Republican as governor of Louisiana. Houzeau then migrated to Jamaica, where he lived for eight years. He kept his European contacts and was reinstated as director of the Royal Observatory in Brussels. He returned to Belgium and his work there as an astronomer. In December 1882, however, Houzeau made a return trip to Texas. He led a scientific expedition, accompanied by Albert Benoît Lancaster and Charles Emile Stuyvaert, to San Antonio to observe a locally visible transit of Venus across the face of the sun. At the time, this was a method of measuring time and gravity.