Recipients of the Lalande Prize

Henri Joseph Anastase Perrotin (December 19, 1845 – February 29, 1904) was a French astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets. Some sources give his middle name as Athanase.
In his early career, he and Guillaume Bigourdan were assistants of Félix Tisserand at Toulouse Observatory. Later, he was the first director of the Nice Observatory in Nice, France from 1884 until his death. He made observations of Mars and attempted to determine the rotation period of Venus. He also calculated perturbations in the orbit of 4 Vesta.In the literature, he is sometimes referred to as Henri Perrotin and sometimes as Joseph Perrotin (this is indeed one and the same person). He is also referenced in H.G Well's novel "The War of The Worlds" as "Perrotin of Nice". His 6 asteroid discoveries are credited by the Minor Planet Center to "J. Perrotin".He won the Prix Lalande in 1875 and 1883. The Martian crater Perrotin and the inner main-belt asteroid 1515 Perrotin were named in his honor.

Félix-Victor Mauvais (or Victor Mauvais; March 7, 1809 – March 22, 1854) was a French politician and astronomer. He was born in the small village of Maîche in the department of Doubs and died in Paris.
In 1836 he went to the Observatoire de Paris as a student astronomer. He worked at the Bureau des Longitudes from 1843 to 1854, working on meteorology. He was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1843. He won the Lalande Prize in 1843 for the discovery of comet C/1843 J1. He also discovered comets C/1844 N1 and C/1847 N1.
In politics, he served as a leftist member of the National Assembly from 1848 to 1849.
On March 2, 1854, the Observatory and the Bureau des Longitudes were separated, which obliged Mauvais to leave this institution. Very affected by this, he fell ill and committed suicide a few weeks later.

Paul-Auguste-Ernest Laugier (22 December 1812, in Paris – 5 April 1872) was a French astronomer, one of two French astronomers referred to as M. Laugier.

Maurice Théodore Adolphe Hamy (31 October 1861, Boulogne-sur-Mer – 9 April 1936, Paris) was a French astronomer.
He obtained in 1887 a doctorate from the Faculté des sciences de Paris with dissertation Étude sur la figure des corps célestes. In the 1890s he applied his method of interference fringes to an analysis of errors made in astronomical observations using meridian circles. He used his interference method to confirm Barnard's measurement of the apparent diameter of Venus. Hamy participated in the creation of l'Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée (SupOptique).
He won the prix Lalande in 1895. Filling the empty chair created by the death of Jules Janssen, Hamy was elected in 1908 a member of l'Académie des sciences and then in 1928 its president. He was also elected a member of the Bureau des longitudes.
He is a nephew of Ernest Hamy.

François Gonnessiat (May 22, 1856 (Nurieux-Volognat)–October 18, 1934) was a French astronomer, observer of comets and discoverer of two minor planets.He worked at the Observatory of Lyon. In 1889 he won the Lalande Prize for astronomy from the French Academy of Sciences; 1901 became director of the Quito (Ecuador) Observatory for the purpose of making geodetic measurements. He became a well known and respected member of the academic scene of the city, where a street is named after him. From 1908 to 1931, he was director of the Algiers Observatory where one of his colleagues was Benjamin Jekhovsky. He was also director of the Quito Astronomical Observatory.The asteroid 1177 Gonnessia was named in his memory (H 109).

Jean-Félix Adolphe Gambart (12 May 1800 – 23 July 1836) was a French astronomer.He was born in Sète in Hérault department, the son of a sea captain. His intelligence was noticed at a young age by Alexis Bouvard, who persuaded him to join the astronomy profession. In 1819 he joined the Marseilles Observatory and became the director in 1822.
During his career he recorded a number of observations of the satellites of Jupiter, and discovered a total of 13 comets. In 1832 he observed the transit of Mercury across the Sun, noting that the planet appeared deformed as it approached the edge.
He suffered from tuberculosis, and in 1836 died from cholera in Paris, aged 36.
The crater Gambart on the moon is named after him. He was also awarded the medal of the London Astronomy Society for his calculation of a cometary orbit.

Jean Bosler (24 March 1878, Angers – 25 September 1973, Marseille) was a French astronomer and author of several books.
Recruited by Deslandres as an astronomer at l’observatoire de Paris, Bosler discovered in 1908 in the spectrum of Comet Morehouse the spectral lines of ionized nitrogen, which was the first evidence of that element in comets. Much of his research was on the physical properties and orbits of comets. He made a report on progress in astrophysics in the United States for the 1910 annual report of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1912, he showed in his doctoral dissertation (supervised by Henri Poincaré) that the Sun’s magnetic field, by means of the intermediary of the solar wind, explains many aspects of cometary tails, the aurora borealis and aurora australis, solar storms and telluric currents. During a solar eclipse in 1914, Bosler observed in the corona a spectral band “nouvelle, intense et unique” which he suggested was spectral evidence for coronium; however, in the 1930s subsequent research showed that the cause was a highly ionized form of iron. In 1916, he published an analysis of the circular form of lunar craters as caused by the impact of meteors.
In 1923 Bosler was named director of Marseille Observatory, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1948. Simultaneously with his directorship, he taught at the University of Marseille from 1923 to 1948. Bosler made important contributions to the theory of the evolution of stars and published the first textbook in French that dealt with the then recent discoveries of Hubble and the work on optical phenomena of such physicists as Michelson, Fabry and Perot.
Bosler won the Prix Jules Janssen in 1911 from the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society, and the Prix Lalande from l'Académie des sciences in 1913.
He came from the French branch of the Hessian family Boßler.Books

Les théories modernes du soleil (1910)
L’évolution des étoiles (1923)
Cours d’astronomie (1928)

Hervé Auguste Étienne Albans Faye ((1814-10-01)1 October 1814 – (1902-07-04)4 July 1902) was a French astronomer, born at Saint-Benoît-du-Sault (Indre) and educated at the École Polytechnique, which he left in 1834, before completing his course, to accept a position in the Paris Observatory to which he had been appointed on the recommendation of M. Arago. It was during his time at the École Polytechnique that he developed his interest in astronomy.He studied comets, and discovered the periodic comet 4P/Faye on 22 November 1843. His discovery of "Faye's Comet" attracted worldwide attention, and won him the 1844 Lalande Prize and a membership in the French Academy of Sciences. In 1848 he became an instructor in geodesy at the Polytechnique, and in 1854 rector of the academy at Nancy and professor of astronomy in the faculty of science there. Other promotions followed in succeeding decades. He became Minister of Public Instruction in the Rochebouet cabinet in 1877, a position which he held only briefly.
Faye served as the President of the Société Astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1889 to 1891. He also served as president of the International Geodetic Association from 1892 to 1902.His work covered the entire field of astronomical investigation. It comprised the determination of comet periods, the measurement of parallaxes, and the study of stellar and planetary movements. He also studied the physics of the sun. He advanced several original theories on the nature and form of comets, meteors, the aurora borealis, and the sun.

Bernard Ferdinand Lyot (27 February 1897 in Paris – 2 April 1952 in Cairo) was a French astronomer.

François Félix Tisserand (13 January 1845 – 20 October 1896) was a French astronomer.