3-47. Louis Ferdinand Cruls
Louis Ferdinand Cruls (1848–1908) was born in Diest, Belgium. Trained as a civil engineer at the University of Ghent, he obtained a commission as a second lieutenant in the Belgian army in 1869. He resigned his commission after a few years, and travelled to Brazil in 1874, where he found employment with the Commission of the Empire General Charter. In 1877, Cruls was named by Emmanuel Liais, director of the Imperial Observatory in Rio de Janeiro, to the Commission on Longitude, which was attached to the Observatory.
Cruls was a skilled astronomer, who published several notes in the Comptes rendus of the Paris Academy of Sciences, beginning in 1878, on subjects ranging from the passages of Venus and Mercury to the parallax of 40 Eridani B. Most notably, Cruls co-discovered the Great Comet of 1882, for which he was awarded the Valz Prize of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1884.
Cruls was naturalized in 1881, and changed his given name to “Luíz”. The same year, he was named director of the Observatory.11endnote: 1 For an appreciation of Cruls’ life and work, see Stroobant (1908); Passos Videira (2004); Hockey (2007).
The occasion for Cruls’ letter to Poincaré of late 1902 (§ 3-47-57) was a report by Cruls on an international expedition to map the Javary River, which runs along the border of Brazil and Peru.
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