Franz Huberti

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Franz Huberti (born May 20, 1715 in Geisenheim , † February 2, 1789 in Würzburg ) was a German Roman Catholic clergyman, educator and astronomer.

Life

Franz Huberti was born to Michael and Catharina Huberti.

After his training, he first worked as a master's degree in the lower schools in Fulda , then taught philosophy in Heiligenstadt from 1749 to 1750 . There he also set up a museum for experimental physics. He next took up a four-year mathematics teaching post in Fulda, during which time he traveled to Dillingen , Ingolstadt , Prague and Vienna .

In 1754 Franz Huberti succeeded Anton Nebel (1711–1754) as professor of mathematics and astronomy in Würzburg, where he became “Professor Mathes. Publ. Et ord. ”Inscribed in the register book.

One of his first tasks was an information trip to Paris , which he undertook together with the Heidelberg mathematics professor Christian Mayer , who had studied in Würzburg. In Paris, they became familiar with astronomy and modern celestial instruments with Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and César François Cassini de Thury . Based on the knowledge acquired here, Franz Huberti was then able to successfully manage the construction of the Würzburg observatory . Franz Huberti reports in detail on his astronomical observations in particular in his letters to Joseph Stepling , which were published in 1782.

In 1763 Franz Huberti handed over the professorship for mathematics to Franz Trentel in order to devote himself exclusively to astronomy. On June 6, 1761, for example, he took part in the observation of the passage of Venus through the solar disk with a reflector telescope , which resulted in new knowledge about the solar parallax. The results of these observations are quoted by Johann Franz Encke in the work The distance of the sun from the earth from the passage of Venus from 1761 , published in 1822 . The observation of the passage of Venus on June 4, 1769, for which Franz Huberti had made great preparations, was unfortunately prevented by clouds. He was the first astronomer in Germany to successfully observe the comet , which was visible from June 26 to July 4, 1770 .

Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim hired two technical employees for Franz Huberti, initially Johann Georg Neßfell . This, originally an art carpenter in Wiesentheid and assistant to Balthasar Neumann , had acquired the necessary astronomical knowledge in the Banz monastery and during the restoration of a planetarium in Vienna to build a wooden model of the Copernican solar system which, with the help of clockwork, showed the exact position of all planets for a set point in time. Johann Georg Neßfell then built a brass planetarium based on this model for the court library in Vienna, which he completed in 1753 to the full satisfaction of the emperor. Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim then ordered such a planetarium, which was completed in 1759. Johann Georg Neßfell also built two wall quadrants for the Würzburg observatory. Johann Georg Nessfell's assistant and successor was Johann Georg Fellwöck (1728–1810), who worked in Würzburg until 1794. Among other things, he built a movable quadrant and, above all, a reliable pendulum clock that was used until the observatory was destroyed in 1945.

As early as 1765, Franz Huberti published a paper on the shortage of wood, a treatise on the general shortage of wood and the means to control such shortages , published in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Later he devoted himself intensively to the problem of standardizing the different fruit sizes. Even while he was busy with this work, which was later highly praised, Franz Trentel represented him with the students.

In 1789, Franz Huberti died in Würzburg at the age of 73. His successor was Franz Trentel, who had been active alongside Huberti as a professor of mathematics and astronomy at the Würzburg University since 1775.

Jesuit order

On July 13, 1734 he entered the Jesuit order .

The abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773 hardly changed anything in the situation of Franz Hubertis. He kept. like most of his colleagues, his professorship. The changes in the philosophical faculty , such as the conversion of the professorship in Aristotelian physics to a professorship in theoretical physics , did not directly affect him.

In 1782 the solemn secular celebration of the University of Würzburg took place. The next-door neighbor Franz Hubertis during the festivities, which lasted ten days, was Johann Matthäus Hassencamp , who reported extensively about Huberti in his letters. So he writes about Franz Huberti's character:

“... the mathematician who thinks thoroughly and properly has always shown himself to be in everything, and who accepts nothing as true without evident and sufficient reasons. But no sooner did the talk (which of course only rarely happened, on religious matters; the mathematician was gone, and suddenly transformed into a Jesuit again, as if by magic. Then he could tell stories of magic, miracles, devil's eyes, etc., etc. and bonnement believe what a child would smile about with us. "

At another point he reports on Franz Huberti's attitude towards the dissolution of the Jesuit order:

"Even Professor Huberti, who, like all ex-Jesuits there, is doing quite well, could never speak of it without emotion and visible harm, and believed only the naturalists and Frey spirits were to blame for its overthrow."

Franz Huberti remained loyal to his order even after its abolition, which was reversed in 1814, and bequeathed his property to the Jesuit college in Polotsk on the Daugava in Belarus, which was transferred from Lithuania to Russia in 1772 and was therefore not dissolved in 1773.

Honors

Hubertistraße in the Würzburg district of Frauenland was named after Franz Huberti .

Works

There are also 19 letters that Huberti wrote to the renowned Prague astronomer Joseph Stepling (born 1716 in Regensburg , died 1778 in Prague, where he studied and taught): he wrote the first two on March 10 and July 23, 1752 in Fulda, the remainder date from December 28, 1755 to April 20, 1771 in Würzburg.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Huberti - WürzburgWiki. Retrieved February 17, 2018 .
  2. ^ Ingrid Hupp: Franz Huberti. University of Würzburg, April 3, 2016, accessed on February 17, 2018 .
  3. ^ Christian Bönicke: Outline of a story from the University of Wirzburg: Zweyter Theil . tape 2 . Würzburg 1788, p. 161 ff . ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  4. ^ Johann Wolf: History of the high school in Heiligenstadt from 1575–1774 . JC Baier, Göttingen 1813, p. 66 ( digitized version in Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Huberti, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huberti, Franciscus; Huberti, Franc̦ois
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Jesuit, university professor, mathematician and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1715
PLACE OF BIRTH Geisenheim
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 1789
Place of death Wurzburg