Alain-Philippe Segonds (1942–2011)

Abstract

Alain-Philippe Segonds, honorary director of research at the CNRS and member of the Team for the History of Astronomy at the Paris Observatory, died suddenly on Monday, 2 May 201 1, in his sixty-eighth year.Alain was born in Paris on 1 August 1942. After completing a baccalaureate in philosophy in 1961, he undertook classical studies at the Sorbonne. In parallel with the courses offered by the university, he attended the seminar of Fr Andre-Jean Festugiere, the master of the history of ancient hermeticism and Neoplatonism, at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. From this exposure, Alain's passion grew for Neoplatonist authors: Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus (for whom he latter contributed critical editions to the Bude collection), and Damascius.But Alain's interests rapidly outgrew the domain of Greek philosophy and philology. In 1963 he was privileged to attend the last course given by Alexandre Koyre, shortly before Koyre's death. Reading the books of this great historian of science and, starting in 1966-67, attending the seminars of Rene Taton and Fr Pierre Costabel at the Centre Alexandre Koyre gave him a taste for the history of science and particularly of astronomy. Taton, thinking that France should embrace a proposal made in 1973 by the Nicolas Copernicus Commitee of the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science, launched the project of a French edition of the works of Copernicus and his disciple Rheticus. With Jean-Pierre Verdet, astronomer at the Paris Observatory, as coordinator and host, a Team was created there consisting of himself, Henri Hugonnard-Roche, former student of the Ecole des Chartes, Alain Segonds, and the author of these lines. After the 1982 publication of Rheticus 's Narrano prima, a critical edition of Copernicus 's De revolutionibus with French translation and commentary became the goal of Alain and the other members of the Team, though each also continued to devote a consistant part of his working time to his personal projects.In 1988, Alain became Director General of Les Belles Lettres, an old and distinguished publishing house famous for its Guillaume Bude series of Greek and Latin classics. There he maintained an astonishing range of activity as an editor and tireless animator of several collections. One of Alain's most notable characteristics was his devotion to young scholars, aiding them in many ways to publish their work and to find, when possible, positions in the academic world. Serious and exigent, but hating pedantry, and also honours - this is the reason why he was member of no academy - Alain had also a lively sense of humour that made collaboration with him very enjoyable.In history of astronomy, the works completed by Alain are impressive, for the Greek period as well as for the Renaissance. His first book was an annotated French translation of the Treatise on the astrolabe of John Philoponus, published in 1981 by Alain Brieux for the International Society for the Astrolabe. Alain's 1987 study on Proclus and astronomy developed an essential aspect of the thought of the Neoplatonic savant. Alain also prepared a translation of Proclus 's Commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements and his Hypotyposis (or Sketch of planetary theories), which are not yet published. …