LUC BLANCHET ELECTED FULL MEMBER OF THE BUREAU DES LONGITUDES
Luc Blanchet © Jean Mouette IAP-CNRS-UPMC
The Bureau des Longitudes « Office of Longitudes » (BDL hereafter) is an academy founded in 1795, comprising thirteen full members and about forty corresponding members (astronomers, physicists and geophysicists). Originally responsible for astronomical calculations and the determination of longitudes at sea (then of strategic importance), the BDL had a considerable role (in the days of Laplace, Arago and Poincaré) for the determination of the hour and the metrology, the calculation of planetary ephemerides, geodesy and geophysics (including the organization of major scientific expeditions). The BDL now has an advisory and support role for laboratory activities, and for organizing numerous scientific events. It meets every month at the Institut de France, Quai de Conti, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
Luc Blanchet is a senior physicist at the CNRS. His research subjects related to the activities of the BDL are the experimental tests of relativity and space experiments such as: Microscope (test of the principle of equivalence in orbit - equal gravitational accelerations of two masses of different compositions), Pharao-ACES (atomic clock placed in the international space station to measure, among other things, the gravitational shift of frequencies, or Einstein effect) and the STE-QUEST project (test of the principle of equivalence by atomic interferometry).
Web writing: Valérie de Lapparent
Layout: Jean Mouette
January 2018