Page - 228 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5228 silent.60 The only part that was printed was the first and fundamental one, enunciating the theory in general with special emphasis on Hell’s own obser- vation data assembled north of the sixty-sixth latitude. In the further parts of the treatise, Hell promised to discuss auroral observations from more south- erly latitudes. If finished, this would have brought him into an even more ex- plicit confrontation with the leading theory in existence, that of Mairan. According to his Traité physique et historique de l’aurore boréale (Physical and historical treatise on the aurora borealis [1733, 2nd ed. 1754]), the phenomenon takes place when particles from the “atmosphere” of the Sun meet the atmo- sphere of the Earth. The reasons for Wilcke’s dismissal may have been partly connected to the fact that two Swedes, Olof Hiorter (1696–1750) and Anders Celsius, had found the correlation between (genuine) auroral outbreaks and disturbances of the magnetic needle, which Hell rejected.61 Finally, as late as 1792, the year in which he died, Hell published his meteo- rological report from Vardøhus, Observationes meteorologicae in insula Maris Glacialis Wardoehus dicta (Meteorological observations made on the island of the Arctic Sea with the name of Vardøhus), originally intended as yet another part of volume 2.62 The weather report contains readings of barometers and thermometers (according to the scale of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur [1683–1757]) three times a day—at 7 a.m., 12 a.m., and 10 p.m. These readings were accompanied by a column designating “the appearance of the sky, weath- er, and directions of winds.” This column contains brief notes on precipitation (not measured in quantity), wind directions, storms, and auroral outbreaks, from the mounting of the instruments on October 15, 1768 until their travel 60 Johan Carl Wilcke, Tal, om De nyaste Förklaringar öfver Norr­ Skenet, hållet, i Kongl. Maj:ts höga nårvaro, för dess Vetenskaps­ Academie (Stockholm: Johan Georg Lange, 1788), esp. 71–98. 61 For a comprehensive discussion of this discovery and they way in which it was mediated in contemporary Sweden, see Sven Widmalm, “Auroral Research and the Character of As- tronomy in Enlightenment Sweden,” Acta borealia 29, no. 2 (2012): 137–56. 62 Maximilian Hell and János Sajnovics, “Observationes Meteorologicae in Insula Maris Gla- cialis Wardoehus dicta […] factae 1768, et 1769,” Ephemerides 1793 (1792), 352–93. This early series of meteorological observations seem to have escaped the notice of historians of meteorology in Norway. A brief series of data from 1829 to 1831 are mentioned as the earliest from Finnmark in B.J. Birkeland, “Ältere meteorologische Beobachtungen in Vardö,” Geofysiske publikasjoner 10, no. 9 (1935): 1–52. Nor is Hell’s meteorological report mentioned in Helge Kragemo, “Pater Hell’s observasjoner i Vardøhus 1769,” in Norvegica: Minneskrift til femti­ årsdagen for opprettelsen av Universitetsbibliotekets norske avdeling 1883; 1. januar 1933 (Oslo: Grøndahl & Søn, 1933), 220–26; Kragemo, “Pater Hells Vardøhus- ekspedisjon”; Kragemo, “Pater Hells ufullendte,” in Med boken som bakgrunn: Festskrift til Harald L. Tveterås (Oslo: Tanum, 1968), 121–33. But see Lajos Bartha, “Hell Miksa légkör- tani munkássága,” Légkör 49, no. 4 (2004): 20–25.