Statue of Adolphe Quetelet

This is a statue of a great mathematician: Adolphe Quetelet. He received a doctorate in mathematics in 1819 from the University of Ghent, where he was also born. Shortly thereafter, he convinced dignitaries and donors to build an observatory in Brussels. He became the first director. The observatory would later move to Uccle and be renamed the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Quetelet did pioneering work in the study of meteors. Until then, most astronomers had considered meteors to be an atmospheric phenomenon that lay outside their field. In 1836, Quetelet led a project from the government of young Belgium to establish a more orderly timekeeping system based on local mean solar time using meridian lines.

Dromos