Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

A more prolific science writer was Carolus Scherffer SJ, whose name has been mentioned
several times already. Scherffer was born in Gmunden (nearly 60 kilometres southwest of
Lincium, in Upper Austria) in 1716 and spent his school years in nearby Steyr. He entered the
Society of Jesus in Vienna in 1732, six years earlier than Hell’s ingressus in Trenchinium.
After his novitiate, Scherffer received education in classical languages in Leoben
(approximately 40 kilometres north of Graecium) before studying philosophy in Graecium.
Having taught for a year at the gymnasium in Krems, roughly 70 kilometres west of Vienna
(1738/39), he studied mathematics in Vienna in 1739-41, only a few years earlier than Hell.
Then followed another year of teaching in Judenburgum, before he returned to Graecium to
embark upon his studies of theology and canon law (1742-47). This means Scherffer was
present when the university built its observatory in 1745, at a time when Hell was receiving
his training at the observatory of Josephus Franz in Vienna. After his third year of probation
in nearby Judenburgum (1747/48), Scherffer emerged as the professor matheseos in Graecium
for the university year 1748/49. The year after, he served as the praefectus of the observatory
as well as the laboratory. It is from this period that his first letters to Weiss are extant. Already
in 1750/51, however, Scherffer moved to Vienna, allegedly because he failed to obtain the
money needed for modernising the stock of instruments in Graecium. 162 For the rest of his life
(he died in 1783), Scherffer taught mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna.
Although his titles changed, he remained a highly esteemed professor and prolific author of
scientific writings in Latin and German. Despite never becoming its formal director, he also
made observations at the Jesuit observatory on several occasions; he was for example one of
the observers of the transit of Venus in 1761 from that site (See Section II.1.3). Like
Liesganig, Scherffer befriended the grand polymath Boscovich SJ during his visits to Vienna
in the 1750s and 60s and collaborated with him in various ways (See Section II.3.1). He is
also credited with being the first to introduce Newtonianism in a textbook of physics in the
Habsburg lands, in the two-volume Institutionum Physicae Pars Prima, seu Physica
Generalis and Pars Secunda, seu Physica Particularis (Vienna 1752-53). Scherffer’s literary
output was immense, in both physics, mathematics and theoretical astronomy. Like Hell and
Weiss, he corresponded with leading astronomers abroad.
162 H. Platzgummer, entry on “Scherffer, Karl” in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús edited by
O’Neill & Domínguez (2001). It is not correct, however, as Wurzbach writes in the Neundzwanzigster Theil
(1875) of his Biographisches Lexikon, that no observations at all could be made, cf. the letters edited by Vargha
1990.
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