by The Polish scholar Maciej Jasinski, Warsaw is one of the two awardees of this AIHS-IAHS prize in 2023.
He received the prize for his excellent work on the correspondence between Johannes Hevelius and Stanislaw Lubienecki.
Maciej Jasiński, The Correspondence of Johannes Hevelius, vol. 4, the Correspondence with Stanisław Lubieniecki, Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2021
The book is a commented edition of the correspondence between Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687), astronomer from Gdańsk, and Stanisław Lubieniecki (1623–1675), Polish religious refugee interested in astronomy. In 1664, when the comet appeared, Lubieniecki entered into correspondence with many European scholars, not only astronomers – Erasmus Bartholin, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, and Athanasius Kircher, among others. While presenting little or nothing about his own opinions, Lubieniecki, as he declared, wanted to learn about comets from the learned people. He published his astronomical correspondence together with a catalog of historical cometary phenomena in his Theatrum cometicum (3 vols., Amsterdam 1666–1668). Hevelius was one of astronomers Lubieniecki contacted after the comet appeared and their correspondence outlasted the publication of the latter’s book – between 1664 and 1673, they exchanged 92 letters (61 sent by Lubieniecki, 31 by Hevelius). Apart from asking about comets and other astronomical subjects, Lubieniecki tried to aid Hevelius with the conflict about the accuracy of his cometary observations. Hevelius, although sometimes unwilling to share his discoveries, used Lubieniecki’s help to distribute his publications and disseminate some of his findings. The correspondence between Hevelius and Lubieniecki is an interesting example of scholarly contacts between a professional and an interested amateur in the early modern era.
