Born on June 8, 1625, in Perinaldo, Republic of Genoa (now Italy), Jean-Dominique Cassini (8 June 1625 – 14 September 1712) was raised and educated in Italy.
Cassini was an astronomer at the Panzano Observatory from 1648 to 1669. He also served as a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna. Invited by Louis XIV, Cassini moved to Paris in 1669 to head the brand-new Paris Observatory.
With an improved, high powered telescope that he carefully shipped from Italy, Cassini continued a string of astronomical discoveries that made him one of the world’s most famous scientists. The discoveries include the rotation periods of Mars and Saturn, and in 1675, Cassini discovered the gap in Saturn’s rings that now known as the “Cassini Division.” From 1671 to 1674, Giovanni Cassini discovered the moons Iapetus, Rhea, Dione and Tethys.
The distance to the sun has always been regarded as the most important and fundamental of all galactic measurements, Cassini’s 1672 measurements, however, was the first to accurately estimate that distance.
Giovanni Domenico Cassini - The first discovered the division in the rings of Saturn
