Back in Geneva in 1819, he was appointed astronomy professor then, in 1821, professor of advanced mathematics at the University of Geneva and director of the Observatory of Geneva. He had a new building constructed on the site in 1830 which was equipped with new instruments: an equatorial of Gambey and a meridian circle.[3]
In 1839, visual impairments prevented him from continuing his career and he gave up his position to one of his pupils, Emile Plantamour.[4]
In 1852, within a year of the publication of Schwabe's results, Gautier and three other researchers (Edward Sabine, Rudolf Wolf and Johann von Lamont) announced independently that the sunspot cycle period was absolutely identical to that of geomagnetic activity.[5][3][6]
Gautier married Angélique Frossard de Saugy in 1826, then in 1849 Louise Cartier.[3] He died without children in Geneva.
References
^Library of Congress Name Authority File
^Broughton, Peter (2014). "Gautier, Jean-Alfred". Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. p. 791. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_505. ISBN 978-1-4419-9916-0.
^Thomas Hockey; Katherine Bracher; Marvin Bolt; Virginia Trimble; Richard Jarrell; JoAnn Palmeri; Jordan D. Marché; Thomas Williams; F. Jamil Ragep (18 September 2007). Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer. pp. 411–. ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7.
^Gautier, Alfred (1852). "Notice sur quelques recherches récentes, astronomiques et physiques, relative aux apparences que présente le corps du soleil" [Notice on some recent astronomical and physical investigations regarding appearances that the body of the sun shows]. Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève: Archives des sciences physiques et naturelles (in French). 20: 177–207, 265–282. On pp. 189–190, after discussing Schwabe's discovery of the solar cycle, Gautier presents Lamont's findings on the relation between the solar cycle and the periodic variations in the magnetic declination. Gautier mentions that the Austrian astronomer Augustin Reslhuber (1808–1875) confirmed Lamont's findings. (Reslhuber's confirmation appeared in: Reslhuber, A. (1852). "Ueber die vom Dr. Lamont beobachtete zehn-jährige Periode in der Größe der täglichen Bewegung der Declinationsnadel" [On the ten-year period in the magnitude of the daily movement of the declination needle, which was observed by Dr. Lamont]. Annalen der Physik. 2nd series (in German). 85 (3): 412–420. doi:10.1002/andp.18521610311.)
^"National Center for Atmospheric Research". Archived from the original on 2014-08-18. Retrieved 2014-06-30.