COLIN, ELIE. - French missionary and astronomer, b. at Graulhet (Tarn) on 28 Nov. 1852, d. at Tanariva on 11 Apr. 1923. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Toulouse in 1870. He had been a priest for two years when his superiors entrusted him (1887) with a scientific foundation intended to increase the prestige and usefulness of the nascent mission of Madagascar.
In 1889 he laid the first stone of the observatory of Ambohdempona (near Tanariva); the same year he began, with Fr. Desiderato Roblet, the triangulation of Imerina which, continued after the new war, is the basis of all the cartography of central Madagascar. While illness kept Fr. C. away from the island (1892), the observatory was destroyed at the end of the Franco-Hova war. Fr. C. rebuilt it the following year and from then on, despite serious financial difficulties, he devoted himself entirely to patient scientific work — seismological, magnetic, astronomical, geodetic and especially meteorological — for the colony, particularly for the reporting of cyclones. The government acknowledged, with high distinctions, the services rendered to the work of colonization; from 1899, Fr. C. was a corresponding member of the Institut de France. His bibliography, collected by his successor, numbers more than 168 items, among books, articles, observations and maps. Two titles outside his specialty stand out; with Fr. P. Suan, he published a popular volume on the island: Madagascar et la mission catholique (Paris 1895); an excellent musician, he carefully collected the old songs of the natives: Melodies malgaches (Tanariva 1899).
Bibliography
Edmondo Lamalle