Seite - 280 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 6280 common: as of the spring of 1770, when they received the report from Vardø, they had never met Father Hell in person. Anders Planman received his education in natural sciences in Åbo (Turku in present-day Finland) and Uppsala. As a docent of astronomy at Uppsala Uni- versity, he was sent to Cajaneborg (Kajaani) in 1761 on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. A couple of years later, he was appointed pro- fessor of physics at the university in Åbo, a position he kept for the rest of his life. From his base in Åbo, he presented a series of calculations of the solar parallax on the basis of the transit of Venus, arguing for a solar parallax of about 8.3 arc seconds. In 1769, Planman was again dispatched to Cajaneborg, where his observation was partly successful, insofar as he did see both the ex- ternal and internal contact during ingress, but only the external contact during egress because of clouds. His datasets were reported by letter to Wargentin in Stockholm, who distributed them promptly to colleagues abroad. Like any other astronomer well versed in the noble art of calculating, Planman was ea- ger to see the observations of his peers in order to recalculate to solar parallax from a completely new set of data. In late February 1770, Planman had not yet received the observation of Hell in Vardø. In a letter to Wargentin, he states that: I thank my Mister [Wargentin] humbly for the observations of Venus that he has deigned to share with me, and will shortly embark upon the calcu- lation of the solar parallax. I find Father Hell highly puzzling, since he has not yet published his observations: such a way of behaving appears rath- er suspicious to me.66 At that moment, Hell’s report had in fact just been released, and Planman’s curiosity was soon satisfied. Seeing that the observations from Vardø did not match perfectly with any other observations, Planman “free[d] him from all suspicions about the veracity of his observation.”67 It might be added, however, that the Åbo professor was not only critical of the lateness of Hell’s report. The swift and unpolished manner in which the Russian observations were pub- lished also had its disadvantages, mainly because they contained only the mo- ments of contact of the transit along with the raw material for the latitude and longitude of each site, without any calculations or reductions to local mean time.68 As he explained in a dissertation presented at Åbo University on May 66 Planman to Wargentin in Stockholm, dated Åbo, February 23, 1770 (cvh). 67 Planman to Wargentin in Stockholm, dated Åbo, June 22, 1770 (cvh). 68 Planman to Wargentin in Stockholm, dated Åbo, November 17, 1770 (cvh).