On June 16, 1754, the birth of the second son of its leading physician was
registered in the "Militärmatriken" of the Invalides' Hospital at Pest,
Hungary. The father was Joseph Zach from Olmütz and the mother Clara née Sontag.
The son received the name Joannes Franciscus Xaverius Vitus Fridericus, and
later became a geodesist and astronomer. For these professions, he acted around
1800 not only as a kind of international information centre, but he moreover
stimulated the work of the other colleagues and carried out important
observations and reductions. He studied and published historical sources, and
his journals constitute themselves more an ocean than a source of the history
of our science, an ocean which is still to be explored for as yet undetected
islands.
At the occasion of the 250 birthday of Franz Xaver von Zach, Hungarian
colleagues took the initiative to commemorate him by a symposium at the seat of
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This book contains contributions that are
based on lectures given at the Budapest symposium "The European Scientist".
Lajos G Balász
Astronomie Geodäsie Zach, Franz Xaver von