Guillaume Le Gentil (1725–1792)

From The Guardian, June 2012: Expeditions [to view the transit of Venus] pushed science and many scientists to the limit, the unluckiest being the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, who set out from Paris in March 1760 but was still at sea on transit day, 6 June 1761. The rolling of his ship prevented him from taking observations. So Le Gentil decided to wait for the next transit in 1769 and built a small observatory in Pondicherry, a French colony in India, where he waited patiently for the next transit on 4 June 1769. On the day, clouds filled the sky even though it had been clear every morning for the preceding month. Le Gentil saw nothing. On his journey home, he contracted dysentery and was caught in a storm that delayed his return to Paris until October 1771 where he found he had been declared legally dead, his wife had remarried and all his relatives had enthusiastically plundered his estate. He eventually remarried, however, and enjoyed an apparently happy life for another 21 years.