Nicholas Halma was a mathematician and translator.

He was educated at the College of Plessis, Paris, took Holy orders

Holy Orders

The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....

, and received the title of Abbé. In 1791 he became principal of Sedan College. When this school closed in 1793, he went to Paris and entered military service as surgeon. In 1794 he was appointed secretary to the Polytechnic School

École Polytechnique

The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...

. He held the chair of mathematics at the Prytanéee of Paris, and then that of geography in the military school at Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...

. As librarian of the Empress Josephine

Joséphine de Beauharnais

Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's...

 and of the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées

École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées

Founded in 1747, the École nationale des ponts et chaussées , often referred to as les Ponts, is the world's oldest civil engineering school...

, he was charged to instruct the empress in history and geography.

Under the Bourbon Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

 he was appointed curator at the library of Sainte Geneviève

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève inherited the writings and collections of one of the largest and oldest abbeys in Paris. Founded in the sixth century by Clovis I and subject to the rule of St. Benedict Abbey, initially devoted to the apostles Peter and Paul, in 512 received the body of the St...

 and became a canon of Notre Dame

Notre Dame de Paris

Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...

. In 1808 he was commissioned by the minister of the interior to continue the "History of France" of Abbé Velly, and prepared the manuscript of two volumes. His most important work, however, was the editing and the translating into Latin and French of Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

's Almagest

Almagest

The Almagest is a 2nd-century mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths. Written in Greek by Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman era scholar of Egypt,...

(Paris, 1813–16), a task undertaken at the instance of Joseph Louis Lagrange

Joseph Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange , born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, was a mathematician and astronomer, who was born in Turin, Piedmont, lived part of his life in Prussia and part in France, making significant contributions to all fields of analysis, to number theory, and to classical and celestial mechanics...

 and Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre. He also translated the Commentaries of Theon of Alexandria

Theon of Alexandria

Theon was a Greek scholar and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He edited and arranged Euclid's Elements and Ptolemy's Handy Tables, as well as writing various commentaries...

(Paris, 1822–25).

Other works

• Table pascale du moine Isaac Argyre (Paris, 1825);
• Astrologie égyptienne (Paris, 1824);
• Examen historique et critique des monuments astronomiques des anciens (Paris, 1830).

Sources

Attribution