Stars of the Southern Heavens

2 Stars of the Southern Heavens The skies over the Malay archipelago first received attention from Europe ans through the publication of a star catalogue by Frederick de Houtman, a high official in the Dutch East India Company and later governor of the island of Amboina. In his catalogue, published in 1603, De Houtman listed 303 southern stars and included names for the major constellations provid ed by Petrus Plancius. Serious astronomy had to wait, though, for the appearance of Pastor Johan Mauritz Mohr, a native of Eppingen in the Pfaltz who studied theology at the University of Groningen and then, from 1737 to 1775, led the congregation of the so-called Portuguese Church at Batavia. A correspondent of metropolitan scientists as well as an eclectic observer of nature in the tropics, Mohr sent reports to the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem, which counted him as a member. Mohr's marriage provided the funds to equip a fine observatory, constructed in 1768. He observed the two transits of Venus across the sun in the 1760s, for Batavia lay in the path of both celestial events. The latter transit brought British and French expeditions to visit him. His appoint ment came from the Dutch East India Company, and he belonged to a tradition of amateur scientific activity then common among Protestant clergy. When Mohr died, his astronomical work found no successor. Astronomy in the East Indies had to wait three generations before being taken up again—under new political and economic circumstances.1 The circumstances, as we have seen, concerned both the Indies and the Netherlands. The universities of Leiden, Groningen, and Utrecht became infected with the research ethic. As the Dutch government made new overseas commitments, astronomers at each of the universities undertook research programs related to distant locations. Leiden contains the oldest, continually operating university observatory in Europe; in the nineteenth century, it effectively functioned as the Dutch naval observatory by training officers and calibrating instruments. Paid by the interior ministry, Leiden 1 Antonie Pannekoek, "Astronomy," in Science in the Netherlands East Indies, ed. L. M. R. Rut- ten (Amsterdam, [1929]), pp. 126-32, on p. 126; Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth Century Science (Princeton, 1959). According to Jean G. Taylor, The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (Madison, 1983), p. 80, Mohr was first rector of the theological seminary at Batavia. Dutch astronomers ca. 1600 are ably studied by Elly Dekker in "Early Explorations of the Southern Celestial Sky," Annals of Science, 44 (1987), 439-70. A general survey has recently been provided by David S. Evans, "Astronomical Institutions in the Southern Hemisphere," in Astrophysics and Twentieth Century Astronomy to 1950, ed. Owen Gingerich (Cam bridge, 1984) [General History of Astronomy, ed. Michael Hoskin, 4, part A], pp. 153-165; it is irrelevant to the undertaking in the following pages. 20 STARS OF THE SOUTHERN HEAVENS astronomers travelled to colonial and foreign locations on major expedi tions. Later in the century, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, turned Groningen's poverty to virtue by analyzing photographical plates taken by David Gill at Cape Town, South Africa. In a decades-long cooperative arrangement, Kapteyn established a prototype 'laboratory' for measuring and analyzing stellar positions. Among all nineteenth-century Dutch astronomers, how ever, J. A. C. Oudemans at Utrecht enjoyed the most success in turning colonial ambitions to finance pure learning. The history of his observatory on the 'Sonnenborgh' is, more than any other European homologue, written in the enormous quantities of tea, sugar, coffee, and tobacco that funnelled from colonial plantations through metropolitan ports. As we shall see, the roots of Dutch excellence in astronomy are intertwined with the colonial ambitions of statesmen and politicians both in the Nether lands and on Java. The Dutch Background to Colonial Astronomy The second great astronomer of the Dutch East Indies, Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans, was born in Amsterdam in 1827. His educator father, Anthonie Cornells Oudemans, witnessed the scientific careers of three of his sons: Corneille Antoine Jean Abram, doctor of medicine, botany, and mycology at the University of Amsterdam; Antoine Corneille, chemist and director of the Delft Institute of Technology; and Jean Abraham Chrétien, astronomer. The young Oudemanses received early education in Weltevre den, the suburb of Batavia, where between 1834 and 1840 their father was principal of an elementary school; all went through secondary education in the Netherlands following their father's return to Leiden, a fortunate move so far as they were concerned, for the first gymnasium came to the East Indies only in I860.2 Anthonie Cornells Oudemans was in a good position to help the careers of his sons, as he counted among his friends a number of English academics and clergymen. When Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy visited Leiden around 1850, for example, he stayed with the elder Oudemans. J. A. C. Oudemans, indeed, credited his father with awakening his interest in science.3 At the age of sixteen Oudemans enrolled as a student at the University of Leiden, where he attended the lectures of Frederik Kaiser. These convinced him to specialize in astronomy. Oudemans grew close to his professor, and Kaiser tried to engage the neophyte at the observatory as an assistant. Oudemans, however, had other intentions, and at the age of nineteen he began teaching mathematics at a Leiden gymnasium. He remained there, as a bachelor, for seven years. He frequented the observa- 2 In Encyc, s. v.: "Oudemans" and 'Onderwijs." 3 uss. Airy to Oudemans, 4 Jul 1854; D. H. Flower to Oudemans, n.d. J. A. C. Oudemans, Afscheidsrede, gehouden in de gehoorzaal der Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht den 9enjuni 1898, des morgens te 11 ure (Utrecht, 1898), p. 9. .

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