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Piazzi, Giuseppe 1746-1826
Italian astronomer

Born in Ponte, northern Italy, he became a Theatine monk (1764), was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Palermo in Sicily in 1780, and founded on behalf of the Bourbon government two observatories, at Naples and at Palermo. After 22 years of observing at Palermo with a vertical circle made by the English optician Jesse Ramsden, he published a monumental catalogue of 7,646 stars (1813). In the course of his observations he discovered on the night of 1 January 1801 the very first minor planet (or asteroid), which he named Ceres after the tutelary deity of Sicily.