ORIANI, Barnaba (1752-1832)

      Barnaba Oriani  (1752-1832), astronomer, geodesist and director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, carried out many important commissions in Italy and abroad, especially on behalf of Napoleon, who showered him with honours. His research on astronomic refraction, on the obliquity of the ecliptic, on orbital theory etc. are certainly noteworthy; but his greatest research was that related to the planet Uranus, discovered by W. Herschel in 1781, of which Oriani was an assiduous observer and the calculator of its orbital properties, which resulted in the tables published in 1793.

Image courtesy of the Centro di Studi Malaspiniani, Mulazzo, Italy.  Biographical notes by Dario Manfredi (Italian version), translated by John Black.