Biography
Camille Flammarion was born in Montigny-le-Roi, Haute-Marne, France. He was the brother of Ernest Flammarion (1846–1936), founder of the Groupe Flammarion publishing house. He was a founder and the first president of the Société Astronomique de France, which originally had its own independent journal, BSAF (Bulletin de la Société astronomique de France), first published in 1887. In January, 1895, after 13 volumes of L'Astronomie and 8 of BSAF, the two merged, making L'Astronomie the Bulletin of the Societé. The 1895 volume of the combined journal was numbered 9, to preserve the BSAF volume numbering, but this had the consequence that volumes 9 to 13 of L'Astronomie can each refer to two different publications, five years apart of each other.
The "Flammarion engraving" first appeared in Flammarion's 1888 edition of L'Atmosphère. In 1907 he wrote that he believed that dwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with the Earth in the past. He also believed in 1907 that a seven tailed comet was heading toward Earth. In 1910 for the appearance of Halley's Comet, he believed the gas from the comet's tail "would impregnate atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet."
His second wife was Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion, also a noted astronomer.
Flammarion died in Juvisy-sur-Orge.
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