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Nan Huairen
Flemish Jesuit who took over the Qing astronomical bureau after the calendar case, built six bronze instruments for the Beijing observatory and cast cannon for the Kangxi emperor
On an observatory terrace at night, a large bronze armillary sphere stands on a stone base while two people stand with their backs turned facing the view; stars are joined into constellation lines overhead, and a sundial and tiered dripping water vessels stand at the right.
Also known as Ferdinand Verbiest
- Roles
- Scientist
Ferdinand Verbiest, known in Chinese as Nan Huairen, was a Flemish Jesuit who entered China in 1659, and was summoned to Beijing the next year to help Adam Schall with the calendar. When Yang Guangxian attacked the Western calendar in the early Kangxi years, Schall and his colleagues were condemned and Verbiest was briefly imprisoned. In 1669 public tests of noon shadows and solar terms bore out his calculations, Yang Guangxian and Wu Mingxuan were dismissed, and Verbiest was put in charge of the calendar as vice director, later director, of the Astronomical Bureau. He built six new bronze instruments for the Beijing observatory, described them with drawings in the Lingtai yixiang zhi, and completed Schall's long-range ephemeris tables. During the Revolt of the Three Feudatories he cast cannon for the throne and was given the rank of vice-minister of works. He died in Beijing in January 1688 with the posthumous name Qinmin, and for generations afterwards Europeans continued to head the bureau.
Life and times
Dates 1623 CE–1688 CE