HALLERSTEIN, Auguštin
* 18. 8. 1703, Mengeš, Slovenia
† 29. 10. 1774, Beijing, China
mathematician, astronomer
In Ljubljana, H. attended the Jesuit school and in 1721 entered their order. Afterwards, he studied in Graz and Vienna, mostly mathematics and astronomy. After a short activity as a teacher, he was given a chance to fulfil his youthful dream in 1735 and go to China as a missionary. He travelled to Lisbon via Genoa, and the following year to Mozambique. In 1737, he continued his journey to Goa, in 1738 to Macao, and in 1739 finally arrived to Beijing, to the seat of the Jesuit mission.
After spending four years there, he became a member of the Chinese Tribunal for Mathematics, and in 1746, after the death of his predecessor Ignaz Kögler, he became the president of this scientific institution, and a court astronomer. In the subsequent years, travels followed: in 1749, he made maps of Manchuria, between 1752 and 1754, he explored some 2,000 km (air distance) long connection between Macao and the southern coast of China. The topography of Manchuria was a part of a great atlas of China with 104 maps, which came out in 1769, after a revision by the French Jesuit Benoit. In 1761, for the needs of this atlas, H. calculated the exact number of inhabitants of the Chinese Empire from tax data, which at that time amounted to 198,213.713. In the end, health problems forced him to give up cartographic work after 1761. At the beginning of 1774 he requested the termination of his astronomical observations. The findings of his observations of planets, which he issued in co-operation with other Jesuits in Beijing, were published in 1768 under the title Observationes astronomicae ab Anno 1717 as Annum 1752 a Patribus Societatis Jesu Pekini Sinarum facte.
After learning in 1773 that the Jesuit Order had been dissolved in Europe, he died of stroke that same year. In recognition of his merits, China awarded him the titles Mandarin and Lieou Song Ling K'iao Nien.
