Abstract

The history of science is intended to study not only the history of discoveries, hypotheses and methodology, but also human connections, which sometimes infl uence the formation and development of scientific knowledge no less than articles and books. Ephemerides of various kinds are particularly diffi cult to observe and study: topical hints understood only in a narrow circle, various statements on a subject that may be forgotten aft er the passage of time, a way of joking that has long since lost its relevance — all that is woven into the fabric of life, including scientific one, and without which it is impossible to imagine people who did science. At the center of the article is a poetic text found in the archive of the remarkable Russian astronomer V.K. Tserasky, who headed the Astronomical Observatory of Moscow University at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and put a lot of eff ort into its construction. The humorous work “Song about the Refractor” (1898) by the Berlin student Benno Messow is one of such samples of humor, which can shed light on the nature of scientifi c contacts between scholars from diff erent countries. The poem is a paraphrase of Friedrich Schiller’s famous “Song of the Bell”, deeply rooted in the tradition of German poetry. Meanwhile, the parodic “song” was presented to V.K. Tserasky, who, according to the presenter’s thought, was able to appreciate the subtlety of the joke. The construction of a refractor in the Moscow observatory seemed an excellent occasion to reuse the text dedicated to the completion of the same device in the Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory. This work is a testimony both to the scientists’ penchant for humor and to the versatile scientifi c and friendly ties between scholars and engineers of Russia and Germany at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article examines Messow’s poem, some details of his biography and the alleged circumstances of the song’s transfer to V.K. Tserasky.

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