Sylvie Pétiaux

Sylvie Pétiaux-Flammarion, age 26

Sylvie Petiaux (Vorlage:Nee, Petiaux-Hugo; after first marriage, Mathieu; after second marriage, Flammarion; born in Valenciennes, Nord on November 28, 1836 and died in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on February 23, 1919) was a French feminist and pacifist.

Biography

Sylvie Petiaux-Hugo was the daughter of Casimir-Joseph Pétiaux (1807-1883) and Marie-Stéphanie Hugo (1811-1892). She claimed to be related to Victor Hugo, but this seems to be an invention. Her sister was Zélie-Rosalie Pétiaux (1838-1873), an opera singer, wife of Count Mikhaïl Illarionovitch Moussine-Pouchkine (1836-1915), and her niece was Olga Illarionova Moussine-Pouchkine (1865-1947), a violinist with the Russian imperial theaters, who became the master of a Martinist lodge in Russia. Camille Flammarion will also be linked to Gérard Encausse, known as "Papus".

Camille and Sylvie Flammarion

She married Esprit Mathieu (1810-1873) on December 31, 1859 in Paris. In 1874, she married the astronomer, Camille Flammarion with whom she had been having an affair for several years. He took her in a balloon for their honeymoon.

Pétiaux shared the same interest for astronomy as her husband. It is at her initiative that the Vorlage:Ill, rewarding eminent services rendered to the Société astronomique de France, was established. Also a feminist, in 1899, Pétiaux founded the pacifist association La paix et le désarmement par les femmes (Peace and disarmament by women).

She died of the Spanish flu in 1919, at the age of 82. Her tomb is located in the park of the Camille Flammarion Observatory of Juvisy-sur-Orge.