Two French scientists took the path of death to measure the distance to the sun. The duo was sent to Cayenne, the capital of Guyana on the northeastern coast of South America, in 1672 from Paris.
They were sent by the French Academy of Sciences (which was founded in 1666 during the reign of Louis It would reveal the distance between the Earth and the Sun, a value not yet known. In this report, we follow the scenes of this risky journey, what the two French scientists Richer and Morris discovered, the risks they were exposed to, and how they ended up with Morris’s death.