Nicolae Donici, între admiraţie şi dispreţ
Nicolae Donici, between admiration and contempt

Summary/Abstract: Nicholas Donici belonged to an illustrious family of Moldavian boyars. He devoted his entire life to astronomy, cofounded the International Astronomical Union and was one of the most avid observers of the Sun and of its eclipses. He was born on the1st/13th September 1874 at Petricani near Chisinau. We have, however, no evidence of the date and place of his death: very likely it happened around 1956, somewhere in southern France. His life took him from St. Petersburg to Odessa, from there to his private observatory on the right bank of the Dniestr, then to Bucharest; he eventually left Romania in 1944 and worked for a while at the Observatory of Paris. I had the rare chance to get to know the last person who hosted him in Romania, another distinguished representative of the family, Mrs. Zoe Donici, who provided unvaluable information about her famous relative. We intend to look back at his unusual life story, entirely devoted to science, which represents a great contribution to the Romanian and universal culture, as witnessed by his work which is preserved in the most important libraries of the world.

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