Wikipedia

Georges Lecointe (29 April 1869 – 27 May 1929) was a Belgian naval officer and scientist. He was captain of the Belgica and second-in-command of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, the first to overwinter in Antarctica. After his return to Belgium he was the founder of the International Polar Organization and deeply involved in the foundation of the International Research Council and the International Astronomical Union.[1]

 

Early life and career

Georges Lecointe was born in Antwerp on 29 April 1869. His father was a well-known mathematics teacher and he proved early on to be a gifted student. He entered the Royal Military Academy in 1886 and the Military Cartographic Institute. After being appointed in 1891 as second lieutenant in the First field artillery regiment and spending some time in the cavalry school in Ypres, he passed the officer examination of the École Polytechnique for the French Navy. The Belgian government detached him to the French Navy, where he was ultimately promoted to ship-of-the-line lieutenant in 1897, or captain-commandant in Belgian army.[2][3] This three-year detachment was exceptional and happened as a result of an audience with king Leopold II: it was only granted to one other Belgian officer, but refused to his friend Emile Danco.[4]

 

Between 1894 and 1897 he trained on a number of ships in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Cochinchina and Tonkin. In 1897 he was attached to the French Observatory of the Bureau des Longitudes and published a course on astronomical navigation and dead reckoning, La navigation astronomique et la navigation estimée, aimed at navy students of the École Polytechnique. For this achievement, he received the Légion d’Honneur in France which the Belgian King Leopold II allowed him to use in Belgium. In his second book, La création d'une marine nationale Belge (On the Creation of a Belgian National Navy), he pleaded for the re-creation of the Belgian Navy, which had been abolished in 1862.[5] This, however, did not happen until the end of the World War I.[6]

Scientific career and later life

Lecointe was engaged to Charlotte Dumeiz (1873–1940) before the departure of the Belgica. Charlotte Bay was named after her, and they married shortly after his return. The couple had three children: Henri, Charlotte and Louis-Georges. Both sons studied at the Free University of Brussels.[5][11][12]

 

On his return, Lecointe was called to the Boxer war in China as a second in command in the navy. He was appointed in 1900 as scientific director, then in 1914 as Director of the Royal Observatory in Uccle. Together with Henryk Arctowski, Emile Racovitza and Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski he organized the scientific results of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, as secretary of the commission charged with the publication of the results. In addition, he oversaw a large-scale renovation of the Royal Observatory. He founded the Belgian Maritime and Vessels Association. Lecointe created the International Association for polar research, a forerunner of the Antarctic Treaty [16] and was the secretary of the International Polar Commission and Congresses in 1906, 1908 & 1913. In 1907, he accepted to become the leader of the second Belgian Antarctic Expedition, a project initiated by Henryk Arctowski. Such an expedition never eventuated due to the lack of funds.

 

He served voluntarily during the First World War as an artillery major and was involved in the defense of Antwerp, but spent most of the war interned in the Netherlands after the fall of the city.[5] After the war he turned his attention to international cooperation in the sciences, and played an important role in the creation of the International Research Council and affiliated scientific unions, in particular the International Astronomical Union. He served as its vice-president from 1919 to 1922,[13] and lead its Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams from 1920 to 1922, while it was temporarily located in Uccle following the First World War.[14] In 1919 he was elected to the executive committee of the International Research Council at its founding congress in Brussels, together with Schuster, Volterra and Hale, with Picard as president.[15] Lecointe was also president of the Royal Belgian Geographical Society (vice-president 1900–1912, new presidency in 1912), the very society that actively sponsored the Belgica expedition.

An illness forced him to resign from the Royal Observatory in 1925 and eventually caused his death in Uccle, on 27 May 1929.[2][3]