The amateur astronomer Anders Hellant and the plight of his observations of the transits of Venus in Tornio, 1761 and 1769

Abstract

Anders Hellant was a versatile Swedish amateur scientist whose figure dominated eighteenth century intellectual life in Tornio, his little home town of some 500 inhabitants at the mouth of the Tornio river. My study is mainly based on the biographies published in Finnish (Bostr¨om 1918) and in Swedish (Tob´e 1991) but I have also consulted some original sources in Paris and in Stockholm. Hellant incarnated almost all by himself the inquiring scientific spirit of the Age of Enlightenment in Swedish Lapland. There is much to be said about his life and works, but here I focus on his observations of the Venus passages in 1761 and 1769.