Conference " The Days of Maximilian Hell"

On May 15, 2020, exactly 300 years have passed since the birth of the Catholic priest, Jesuit, physicist, mathematician and astronomer Maximilian Hell. Maximilián Hell was born in Štiavnické Bane as the third son of Matej Kornel Hell and Juliana Viktória Staindl. He graduated from the grammar school in Banská Bystrica and subsequently, after graduating, applied for admission to the Jesuit order. He later went to Vienna to study history, theology and philosophy. He was ordained a priest in 1750 and began teaching at the Jesuit grammar school in Banská Bystrica. Its scientific contribution is associated primarily with astronomy. Thanks to him, observatories were built in Cluj, Trnava, Buda and Jágr. His observations were also of great importance to astronomy - especially the observation of the transit of Venus in front of the solar disk on the, then, Danish island of Vardø. It also deserves worldwide scientific recognition for its accurate calculation of solar parallax. The primary and secondary school in Štiavnické Bane is named after Maximilian Hell, a native of Štiavnické Bane, and she decided to show her honour by organizing an international conference dedicated to his life and memory. The conference was held as part of a bilateral initiative called Maximilian Hell's Days and was financially supported by grants from the EEA and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism, the Banská Bystrica Region and the Slovak Astronomical Society. The co-organizers of the conference were the Regional Observatory and Planetarium in Žiar nad Hronom and the village of Štiavnické Bane. Unfortunately, the pandemic situation meant that the entire conference had to be held with a year's delay and online. Nevertheless, it can be assessed that the whole conference was a success. The uniqueness of the conference was the participation of guests from almost all over the world. It was interspersed with interesting presentations about the life and work of Maximilian Hell, which is a constant inspiration to us to this day. The uniqueness lay in the simultaneous interpretation of the conference into English, which allowed guests from abroad to fully enjoy the amount of new information. The organization of the conference in the online space was an absolute novelty for our school, but thanks to an amazing team of people, we succeeded. We believe that, like us, you also liked our conference dedicated to Maximilian Hell, and his timeless legacy will continue to resonate.

The conference was attended by a total of 37 active participants on the ZOOM platform and a total of 13 viewers watched us on the YouTube channel in the English version and 57 on the YouTube channel in the Slovak version. A recording of the conference is still available on the YouTube channel:

English version: https://youtu.be/d2AVtlZK4no

Slovak version: https://youtu.be/TKZrxQYLwqs