Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 69-70. (Budapest, 1973)

KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Vida, Mária: Hell Miksa (1720 — 1792), a polihisztor csillagász (angol nyelven)

M. Vida : Miksa Hell (1720—1792). 211 the course of the stars from the little observatory installed in his private flat and started the erection of an observatory in Kolozsvár. 1755 brought another rise in his career: the Queen appointed him director of the observatory in Vienna and he became the professor of mechanics at the university. From now on he rarely left Vienna, but through his directing and planning activities he maintained his connections with the Hungarian institutions. The installation of two further observatories

—in Eger and in Buda—can be credited mainly to him and he offered space for the Hungarian authors in his Ephemerides astronomicae ad meridianum Vindoboniensem, the internationally known journal that he edited from 1757 until his death. Hell was one of the few scientists from Hungary who received due acknowledgement both at home and abroad already in his lifetime. He was fortunate to be given the task of observing the passing of the planet Venus before the Sun. As the phenomenon was to take place between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.

—when the Sun is under the horizon in Central Europe

—the observers had to be at a place where they could see the Sun during those nightly hours. Wardouhuus (Wardő) in Northern Norway, along the 70th parallel, seemed a suitable place. King Christian VII of Denmark undertook to cover the costs of the expedition and asked Hell to lead it. On June 3 1769 Hell and hig colleague János Sajnovics, the head of the observatory of Nagyszombat, successfully completed the observations. On the basis of data obtained here and elsewhere Hell fixed the Earth-Sun distance at 151,2 million kilometres. Considering the technique of measuring at that time Hell's result is not far from the average distance of 149.6 million kilometres measured in 1964 by the Astronomical Union. The enormous significance of Hell's result was not recognized by his contemporaries and many even accused him of falsifying the data. His famous colleague, the French Lalande, was the first to attack him. Two facts seemed to lend some support to the charges: one was that Hell published his results only two years after the expedition, in 1771, under the title "Observatio Transitus Veneris ante discum Solis die tertia Junii Wardoehusii facta". The other was that Hell's findings were at great variance with the results arrived at by Chappe in California and Dymond in the Bay of Hudson. It was nearly a hundred years after the death of Hell that the American astronomer Newcombe did justice to his memory in 1883 by refuting the charges of another attacker, the Vienna astronomer Littrow. Miksa Hell's literary production was considerable. He wrote many textbooks in mathematics and physics, but the making of artificial magnets was one of his main concerns. He published a little book on the subject in 1762 in German, because

—as he put it in the introduction

—he intended it not for the scientists but for the men of practice, as he regarded the practical use of the magnet of primary importance. The problem of magnetism began to attract greater attention at the end of the 18th century with the discovery of galvanism. It left its mark not only on physics but on medicine as well. The discovery of zoomagnetism opened up a new chapter in the history of physics, but it also played an important role in healing, as Galvan himself was professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, being