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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.
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Titel
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Untertitel
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Autoren
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Verlag
- Brill
- Ort
- Leiden
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 492
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Acknowledgments VII
- List of Illustrations IX
- Bibliographic Abbreviations X
- Introduction 1
- 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
- 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
- 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
- 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
- 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
- 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
- 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
- 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
- Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
- Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
- Bibliography 400
- Index 459