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Rh Besides, Maynard points out in detail that the Jesuits at that time had among their number hundreds of able writers in all branches of learning. The Society could boast of great mathematicians and scientists, as the famous Roger Boscovich († 1787), who was despatched by the Royal Society of London to California to observe the second transit of Venus. During the heat of the French Revolution the French astronomer Lalande, who took pride in the title "the atheist astronomer", ventured to write Father Boscovich's eulogy in the "Journal of Men of Science" (February 1792). Then there was Maximilian Hell († 1792), for thirty-six years director of the Imperial Observatory at Vienna. In 1768 he was invited by Christian VII., King of Denmark, to observe in Lapland the transit of Venus. Of the result of Father Hell's expedition Lalande wrote: "This was one of the five complete observations made at great distances apart." Father Hell was a worthy successor to the