Page - 182 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 4182 Thus, the outcome of the 1761 Venus transit observations confirmed the then low reputation of Danish astronomy. The editor of the Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (History of the Royal Academy of Sciences) for the year 1757 (published 1762), in pointing out that the king of Denmark would be in a position to provide data of the utmost utility by dispatching astrono- mers to northern Norway in 1769, immediately added, with hardly concealed skepticism: “If there are, in his estates, observers sufficiently experienced, and equipped with instruments of sufficient quality to make this grand observa- tion with adequate precision.”32 In Lalande’s 1764 colored mappemonde of the visibility of the coming transit, northern Norway, including “Wardhus,” emerged as an ideal place for observations, but in an accompanying memoir the author expressed his expectation that astronomers from Sweden and Rus- sia would penetrate the region, saying nothing about their colleagues from Denmark–Norway.33 During the winter of 1766–67, another influential French astronomer, Pingré, presented to the Académie Royale des Sciences a memoir “On the Choice and State of Sites Where the Passage of Venus of June 3, 1769 May Be Most Advantageously Observed.” Like Lalande, Pingré pointed to Lap- land, where he expected great things of the Swedes and the Russians, while barely mentioning the Danes at all.34 By the same token, on January 5, 1768, the British astronomer royal sent a letter to Wargentin, urging the Swedish Academy of Sciences to send observers to “Wardhus” and “Lapponiæ caput septentrionale” (the northern Cape of 32 “Du passage de Vénus sur le Soleil, qui s’observera en 1769,” hars (1757; published 1762): 99–108, here 106. 33 Joseph Jérôme de Lalande, Explication de la figure du passage de Venus sur le disque du Soleil, qui s’observera le 3 Juin 1769; Avec les résultats du passage observé en 1761 (Paris: Jean- Thomas Hérissante, 1764), esp. 14–17. 34 Alexandre Guy Pingré, Mémoire sur le choix et l’état des lieux où le passage de Vénus du 3. Juin 1769 pourra être observé avec le plus d’avantage; Et principalement sur la position géographique des isles de la mer du Sud […] Lu à l’Académie des Sciences, le 23 Décembre 1766 & en Janvier & Février 1767 […] (Paris: P.G. Cavelier, 1767), esp. 12–13, 17–18. As for the opinions of astronomers in other countries on the matter, a similar memoir by Lagrange, read at the Royal Academy of Berlin on November 12, 1767, is more limited in its geo- graphical scope: apart from several locations in Germany, Lagrange mentions only Paris and a couple of places in the Middle East. Cf. Joseph Louis de Lagrange, “Mémoire sur le passage de Vénus du 3 Juin 1769,” Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Belles- Lettres de Berlin (1766; published 1768): esp. 265–301. There seems, however, to have been plans for an expedition by Berlin’s astronomer royal, Johann iii Bernoulli, to Lapland at an early stage, but these plans had already been dropped by the time Lalande mentions them in a letter dated Bourg-en-Bresse, October 4, 1768 (ubb, LIa701). Printed in Simone Dumont and Jean-Claude Pecker, eds., Mission à Berlin: Jérôme Lalande, lettres à Jean iii Bernoulli et à Elert Bode (Paris: Vrin, 2014), 53–54.