Bernard Lyot
Bernard Ferdinand Lyot (27 February 1897 in Paris – 2 April 1952 in Cairo) was a French astronomer. Biography. An avid reader of the works of Camille Flammarion, he became a member of the Société Astronomique de France in 1915 and made his first observations using the society's telescope on rue Serpente in Paris. He soon acquired a telescope and soon upgraded to a . From graduation in 1918 until 1929, he worked as a demonstrator at the École Polytechnique and studied engineering, physics, and chemistry at the University of Paris. From 1920 until his death he worked for  the Meudon Observatory, where in 1930 he earned the title of "Joint Astronomer of the Observatory". After gaining the title, he earned a reputation of being an expert of polarized and monochromatic light. Throughout the 1930s, he labored to perfect the coronagraph, which he invented to observe the corona without having to wait for a solar eclipse. In 1938, he showed a movie of the corona in action to the International Astronomical Union. In 1939, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. He became Chief Astronomer at the Meudon Observatory in 1943 and received the Bruce Medal in  1947. Lyot was the President of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society, from 1945-1947. He suffered a heart attack while returning from an eclipse expedition in Sudan and died on 2 April 1952, at the age of 55. Awards and honors. Awards Named for him