Abstract
The first Jesuit to enter China was Matteo Ricci. He became aware of the interest of Chinese in mathematics and astronomy and their relative ignorance and wrote in Chinese books on these subjects. He made the first translation of Euclid’s work into Chinese. He saw the importance of Jesuits to be involved in the reform of the Chinese calendar that had many failures. Johann Schall became director of the Imperial Observatory and his calendar was approved in 1645. Under the first Manchu Emperor Sunzhi, Schall became an important counsellor at the imperial court. He was succeeded in the direction of the Observatory by Ferdinand Verbiest who had a high rank position with emperor Kangxi. Jesuits were in charge of the Observatory until 1773. Jesuit astronomers made an expedition to Siam that soon failed. Jesuits made also astronomical observations in India, specially, collaborating with the Rajah of Jaipur. Thus Jesuits were the first to bring western astronomy and mathematics to China and India, carrying out scientific exchange between West and East.
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Notes
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Reference
Udías, Agustín. 2003. Searching the heavens and the earth. The history of Jesuit observatories. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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Udías, A. (2015). Jesuit Astronomers in China and India. In: Jesuit Contribution to Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08365-0_4
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