Gérard Henri de Vaucouleurs (; 25 April 1918 – 7 October 1995) was a French astronomer best known for his studies of galaxies.
Life and career
Gérard de Vaucouleurs was born on April 25, 1918 in Paris, he took the maiden name of his mother as his last name. He had an early interest in amateur astronomy and received his undergraduate degree in 1939 at the Sorbonne in that city.
After military service in World War II, he resumed his pursuit of astronomy. He was married to fellow astronomer Antoinette de Vaucouleurs on October 31, 1944, and the couple would frequently collaborate on astronomical research.
He was fluent in English and spent 1949-51 in England and 1951–57 in Australia at Mount Stromlo Observatory. He was at Lowell Observatory in Arizona from 1957-1958 and at Harvard from 1958-60.
In 1960 he was appointed to the University of Texas at Austin, where he spent the rest of his career. He was one of the first five faculty in the newly formed astronomy department there. His later work focused on the study of galaxies and he co-authored the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies with his wife Antoinette (1921-1987), a fellow UT Austin astronomer and lifelong collaborator.