Seite - 68 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 168 time to construct sun and moon dials, as well as terrestrial and celestial globes. These were probably included in the Museum Mathematicum, or laboratory of the Jesuit college, which had been founded in 1714 and occupied a lower floor underneath the observatory itself.89 Karl Scherffer (1716–83) must also be mentioned among Hell’s seniors at the University of Vienna who were to play a part in his later career. A mere four years older than Hell, Scherffer—a native of Gmunden in Upper Austria— already had a professorial career in Graz behind him when in 1750 he was called back to Vienna, where he had pursued his studies. The apparent reason for his recall was that as the prefect (praefectus) of the new observatory (estab- lished in 1745) as well as the laboratory in Graz he failed to obtain the money needed for modernizing the stock of instruments.90 According to some ac- counts, no observations at all could be made in the Graz observatory,91 which has also been described as “still-born.”92 This would have been certainly un- worthy of the traditions of astronomy in Graz, where Kepler had stayed in the final years of the sixteenth century, and the Jesuit Paul Guldin (1577–1643) had presented his influential theory of gravity in the 1630s and 1640s. Be that as it may, Scherffer earned high esteem as a professor of mathematics and physics and was a prolific author of scientific writings in Latin and German. His Insti- tutionum Physicae Pars Prima, seu Physica Generalis and Pars Secunda, seu we have not been able to locate this work. Cf. Aspaas, Posch, and Müller, “Astronomische Observatorien der Jesuiten.” 89 Steinmayr, “Geschichte der Universitätssternwarte,” 263. 90 Helmut Platzgummer, “Scherffer, Karl,” in O’Neill and Domínguez, Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús 4:3519–20. 91 Constant von Wurzbach, “Karl Scherffer,” in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oes- terreich, enthaltend die Lebensskizzen der denkwürdigen Personen, welche seit 1750 in den österreichischen Kronländern geboren wurden oder darin gelebt und gewirkt haben, vols. 1–60 (Vienna: Verlag der Univeritätsbuchdruckerei/K.k. Hof- und Stadtsdruckerei, 1856– 91), 29:214–16. 92 Johann Steinmayr, “Die alte Jesuiten-Sternwarte in Graz,” ed. Isolde Müller and Thomas Posch, in Beiträge zur Astronomiegeschichte 11, ed. Wolfgang R. Dick, Hilmar W. Duerbeck, and Jürgen Hamel, Acta historica astronomiae 43 (Frankfurt: Harri Deutsch, 2011), 232–60, here 245. This is, however, contradicted by an undated letter of Scherffer to Franz Weiss; see Magda Vargha, ed., Correspondence de Ferenc Weiss astronome hongrois du xviiie siè- cle (Budapest: Bibliothèque de l’Université Budapest, 1990), 8–9. On the evidence of man- uscripts at the Universitätsbibliothek Graz, regular astronomical observations were made in Graz in 1758–60, 1762, and 1764–73, but some astronomical observations from the years 1746–47 are also extant, as well as meteorological observations from the years 1754–56 and 1760–73. See the editors’ introduction and comments on Steinmayr’s study. Thanks also to Michaela Scheibl at the Universitätsbibliothek Graz for the information provided via cor- respondence. On Weiss, see below, 75–6.