Terao was born as the eldest son to Kiheita Terao, a samurai of the
Fukuoka Domain in Haruyoshi village, Naka District,
Chikuzen Province, Japan (now
Nakasu,
Hakata-ku, Fukuoka,
Fukuoka Prefecture). He studied at the Shuyukan Han school (currently
Fukuoka Prefectural Shuyukan High School) and went on in 1873 to stay in Tokyo where he took a course in French language at the Tokyo School of Foreign Studies (currently,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) which he completed before enrolling at a
Kaisei school (which would later become Tokyo University) where he majored in
physics. He would also go on to study astronomy under
foreign government advisor Emile-Jean Lépissier before completing his physics course and graduating from the physics department of Tokyo University. In 1879, he went to study in France on a government-funded exchange program where he would continue to further his studies in astronomy and mathematics. On July 12, he began as an apprentice at the Montsouris Observatory in Paris before beginning his course of mathematics and
celestial mechanics at the
University of Paris on November 1. In December he would go on to study practical aspects of his course in the
Paris Observatory. After completing his course, he was granted a bachelor's degree of mathematical science. In 1882, he joined a French government-organized observation of the
transit of Venus on the island of
Martinique in the
Caribbean Sea, he also visited some observatories in the United States. He returned to Japan the following year in 1883. In 1884, he became a professor of astronomy at the academy, and it was at this time he would go on to give lectures in universities as a mathematician on topics such as
elliptic functions and
theta functions. He was a proponent for the
romanization of the Japanese language, and in January 1885 he along with
Masakazu Tomoya,
Ryōkichi Yatabe,
Yamakawa Kenjirō,
Naokichi Matsui,
Arikata Kumamoto, and
Jirō Kitao,
ˆfounded the
Rōmaji-kai (羅馬字会, "Romanization Group"). On the second of June 1886 he became head of the
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. In 1889 he attended an assembly of the
International Association of Geodesy, where he bought back an
international prototype meter to Japan.
Portrait In 1883, 17-year-old Japanese artist
Kuroda Seiki studied French under Hisashi Terao, and passed the entrance exam for the French course at the
Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. In 1909, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Terao's tenure at the Tokyo Imperial University, Kuroda Seiki drew a portrait of Terao in appreciation of him. == References ==