To Benjamin Franklin from Edme-Sébastien Jeaurat, 13 November 1784
From Edme-Sébastien Jeaurat8
AL: American Philosophical Society
A l’observatoire Royale ce 13 novembre 1784.
M. Jeaurat de l’Academie Royale des Sciences à l’honneur de rendre ses hommages à Monsieur Franklin et le prie de vouloir bien faire passer à Boston le paquet ci joint pour Mr. Joseph Willard; c’est le volume de la connoissance des Temps pour 1787 que j’envoie à M. Joseph Willard.9
Notation: Jeaurat 13 Nov. 1784—
8. A distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Jeaurat had been a member of the Académie des sciences since 1763 and editor of its astronomical almanac, the Connaissance des temps, since the mid-1770s. On Jan. 29, 1783, Jeaurat was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: XXIX, 777n; Dictionary of Scientific Biography; Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, new ser., XI (1882), 55.
9. Willard was corresponding secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: XXXIV, 360n. Connaissance des temps for the year 1787 had first been offered for sale only four days earlier: Jour. de Paris, Nov. 9, 1784.