Franz Xaver von Zach

Franz Xaver von Zach (born June 16, 1754, Pest, Hungary—died September 2, 1832, Paris, France) was a German Hungarian astronomer noted for being the nexus of astronomical information in Europe in the early 19th century.

Zach was educated at a Jesuit seminary and later evinced extreme enmity toward Jesuits. He became attracted to astronomy at age 15, when he viewed a comet and the 1769 transit of Venus. He subsequently taught himself the basics of science from French astronomer Jérôme Lalande’s Traité d’astronomie (1764; “Treatise on Astronomy”).

Four years after Galicia became Austrian territory in 1772, Franz and his brother Anton moved to Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) to work with the Jesuit Joseph Liesganig in a geodetic survey of the land. Liesganig became Zach’s implacable enemy, and during his whole life Zach was plagued by Liesganig’s letters of denunciation. In 1776 Zach became a professor of mechanics at Lemberg’s Collegium Nobilium (now Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), a post created for him by the empress Maria Theresa. When that position was terminated after the empress’s death in 1780, Zach moved to Paris, and in 1783 he accompanied Hans Moritz, Graf (count) von Brühl, to London after Brühl was appointed Saxon minister to the British government. While in England, Zach in 1784 uncovered long-lost scientific papers of the English astronomer Thomas Harriot. Although his attempts to get them published came to naught, the discovery made him well known.

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When Brühl’s trusted friend, Ernest II, duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, expressed an interest in establishing an observatory near Gotha, Brühl offered to acquire a telescope from British astronomer William Herschel and suggested that Zach serve as director. Zach arrived in Gotha on June 22, 1786; the first stone was laid at Seeberg Observatory on July 16, 1788; and scientific work commenced in 1792. Seeberg was one of the best-equipped observatories in the world; its instruments included an 8-foot (2.4-metre) transit circle by British instrument maker Jesse Ramsden, a 7-foot reflector by Herschel, and two vertical circles.

Zach founded his first of three journals in 1798. The first issue of Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden (“General Geographical Ephemerides”) contained 18 observations of the solar eclipse on June 24, 1797, from as far afield as Madrid and Danzig, Prussia (now Gdánsk, Poland). That immediately established the journal as a vehicle for the collection and dissemination of important research, but only about 25 percent of its contributions concerned astronomy.

Zach was convinced by Bode’s law of planetary distances that there was a missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. Realizing that an organized search was required, he invited astronomers from different countries to a meeting in 1798 that is now recognized as the first astronomical conference ever held. Some 13 delegates from Germany, France, and England attended the 10-day session. That led to the formal creation in 1800 of the Vereinigten Astronomischen Gesselschaft (“United Astronomical Society”), popularly known as the Celestial Police. Its members hoped to find the missing planet, but, before it got started, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Observatory discovered the first asteroid, which he named Ceres Ferdinandea, on January 1, 1801. In 1800 Zach also founded the Monatliche Correspondenz (“Monthly Correspondence”). As the world’s first astronomical journal, it was the central depot for astronomical research until it ended in 1813.

Zach and his brother became Hungarian barons in 1801. The high point of his observational career occurred later that year when he recovered Ceres on December 7 after Piazzi lost it in February. When Zach’s patron, Ernest II, died in 1804, support for the observatory ended, but Zach was made chamberlain to the duke’s widow, Charlotte. They left Gotha, were secretly married, and in 1809 settled in Marseille, where he resumed his work in geodesy, writing a book on the deflection of plumb lines near massive mountains: Attraction des montagnes (1814; “Attraction of Mountains”). They then moved to Genoa, Italy, where he began his third astronomical journal, Correspondence Astronomique (“Astronomical Correspondence”), which was published from 1818 to 1826.

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Following the death of the duchess in 1827, Zach spent his remaining years in Switzerland and Paris, where he was treated for bladder stones by Jean Civiale, a pioneer in dealing with that painful affliction. He succumbed to the cholera pandemic of 1832 and was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.