Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

probably identical with a certain M. Rain S.J. Repetens Matheseos (“M[agister?] Rain of the
Society of Jesus, teacher of mathematics”) that observed the Venus transit from the Imperial
Observatory in 1761; 390 at least Ferencová in her biography states that Hell received
assistance from an “Ignáca Raina” in 1760/61. 391 According to Steinmayr, the same Rain also
served, this time as “zweiter Assistent” (‘second assistant’), at Hell’s observatory in the year
1770, during Hell’s absence in Denmark-Norway. 392 In the university years 1771-73,
however, Rain held the chair as professor matheseos at the collegium in Lincium. There is no
mention of Rain in the two recent “Diplomarbeiten” on the history of Viennese astronomy by
Nora Pärr and Cornelia Schörg. 393 His collaboration for the Ephemerides was in any case
limited to the Anni 1776 volume only, and Steinmayr states that his year of death is unknown.
However, a letter from Hell to Jean Bernoulli III in Berlin, dated 30 November 1776, reveals
that Rain had by then already departed for a post as a professor of mathematics in Leopolis.
Rain here served as an assistant of Liesganig in his survey of Galicia. It may be he ended his
days in Galicia. 394
The career of Franciscus Güsman (or Güssmann, Gueßmann, Guessmann, 1741-1806) is
briefly sketched in Cornelia Schörg’s Diplomarbeit. 395 He was born in Wolkersdorf (roughly
15 kilometres north of Vienna) in 1741, entered the Society of Jesus in 1757 and was
preparing for departure for the Jesuit missions in China as the suppression arrived in 1773. 396
His participation in the calculations of the Ephemerides appears to have been limited to one
year only (Anni 1776). By November 1776, Güsmann had left Vienna – along with Rain – to
receive a chair in physics in Galician Leopolis. 397 Like Rain, he took part in Liesganig’s
survey of Galicia from the late 1770s onwards. In 1787 he returned to Vienna, allegedly
because of health problems, and was appointed professor of experimental physics at the
Theresianum. 398 He taught partly at the Theresianum, partly at the Wiener Technisches
Hochshule until he retired and eventually died in Seitenstetten in 1806. 399
390 Hell 1761a, p. 17. In a letter to Taufferer in Labacum (now Ljubljana), dated Vienna 6 April 1761, Hell
speaks of a bidellus (assistant, servant) by the name “Rain”.
391 Ferencová 1995, p. 29, sadly without source quotation.
392 Steinmayr 2010a, p. 200, likewise without source quotation.
393 Pärr 2001, Schörg 2009.
394 Information on Ignatius Rain, unless otherwise noted, has been culled from Fischer 1978.
395 Schörg 2009, p. 99.
396 Steinmayr 2010a, p. 181.
397 Letter from Hell to Jean Bernoulli, dated 30 November 1776 (UB Basel). Note that the content of this letter is
reiterated (in French) in the Second Cahier of Bernoulli’s Nouvelles Littéraires (Bernoulli 1777a, pp. 8-9).
398 Haberzettl 1973, p. 168. See also Brosche 2009a, pp. 22-23.
399 Information on Güsmann, unless otherwise noted, has been taken from Wurzbach, Sechster Theil (1860).
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