CHAPPE (Jean d'Auversche), a French astronomer, was born at Muriac, in Auvergne, March 2. 1728. A taste for drawing and mathematics appeared in him at a very tender age; and he owed to Dom Germain a knowledge of the first elements of mathematics and astronomy. M. Cassini, after assuring himself of the genius of this young man, undertook to improve it. He employed him upon the map of France, and the translation of Halley's tables, to which he made considerable additions. The king charged him in 1753 with drawing the plan of the county of Bitché, in Lorraine, all the elements of which he determined geographically. He occupied himself greatly with the two comets of 1760; and the fruit of his labour was his
elementary treatise on the theory of those comets, enriched with observations on the zodiacal light, and on the aurora borealis. He soon after went to Tobolsk, in Siberia, to observe the transit of Venus over the sun; a journey which greatly impaired his health. After two years absence he returned to France in 1762, where he occupied himself for some time in putting in order the great quantity of observations he had made. M. Chappe also went to observe the next transit of Venus, viz. that of 1769, at California, on the west side of North America, where he died of a dangerous epidemic disease, the 11th of August 1769. He had been named adjunct astronomer to the academy the 17th of January 1759.
The published works of M. Chappe, are, 1. The Astronomical Tables of Dr Halley, with Observations and Additions, in 8vo, 1754. 2. Voyage to California, to Observe the Transit of Venus over the Sun, the 3d of June 1769; in 4to, 1772. 3. He had a considerable number of papers inserted in the Memoirs of the Academy, for the years 1760, 1761, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767, and 1768; chiefly relating to astronomical matters.