Page - 278 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 6278 with fellow astronomers in Sweden and England in this period. Not surpris- ingly, Lalande received news from all over the world in the weeks and months after June 3, 1769. Thus, thanks to his close contacts with astrono- mers on the other side of the Channel, Lalande received all British observa- tions and summarized them in the Journal des Sçavans long before they were printed in the Philosophical Transactions.58 Similarly, the Imperial Rus- sian Academy extracted the Venus transit observations from the expedition diaries of its observers, printed them immediately, and sent them to La lande. And by mutual agreement, its secretary—Johann Albrecht (Jean Albert) Euler (1734–1800)— receiv ed news of French and British observations from Lalande in return.59 Fur thermore, Wargentin in Stockholm summarized all Swedish (including Finnish) observations in letters to Lalande soon after the transit had taken place.60 However, no comparable agreement existed between Lalande and the Royal Society of Sciences in Copenhagen—quite the contrary, in fact. Hell’s refusal to share his observations with anyone else, as explained in his letter to Wargentin quoted above, evidently included the academicians of Paris. Despite Hell’s sta- tus as a corresponding member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, with none other than Lalande as his personal contact, no details whatsoever were revealed to Lalande or his confrères until a copy of Hell’s Observatio transitus Veneris […] 1769 finally reached Paris on March 4, 1770, exactly nine months after the transit had taken place.61 By that time, Lalande had received reports from all over Europe, and even from Hudson’s Bay in present-day Canada. The only crucial observations he lacked were a couple of Siberian observations by Georg Moritz Lowitz (1722–74) and Ivan Islen’ev (1738–84) (published in French 58 See JS (September 1769): 644–45; (December 1769): 835–36; (April 1770): 227–28; (Decem- ber 1771): 825–26 (the last being a “letter to the editors” dated September 13, 1771, in which he explains that he had received the Tahiti observations of Cook’s team two days earlier). For an analysis of Lalande’s contacts with British astronomers, see Danielle M.E. Fauque, “La correspondance Jérôme Lalande et Nevil Maskelyne: Un exemple de collaboration internationale au xviiie siècle,” in Boistel et al., Jérôme Lalande, 109–28. 59 Johann Albrecht Euler to Lalande in Paris, dated St. Petersburg, May 14/26, 1769, and Sep- tember 8/19, 1769 (ran); Lalande to Johann Albrecht Euler in St. Petersburg, dated Bourg- en-Bresse, July 26, 1769, and Paris, January 12, 1770 (ran). 60 Wargentin is known to have sent letters to Lalande in Paris, dated June 9 and July 11, 1769 (see the list of outgoing correspondence in Nordenmark, Wargentin, 399–424, here 406). It is probably the contents of these letters that appeared in Lalande’s “Lettre sur le passage de Vénus; Adressée à Messieurs les auteurs du Journal des Sçavans,” published September 1769, 645. 61 According to Hell, “De parallaxi Solis,” 92.