Ferdinand Verbiest

Ferdinand Verbiest, who lived from 1623 to 1688, was a Flemish Jesuit missionary in China during the Qing dynasty, born in Pittem in the County of Flanders, now part of Belgium, and known in Chinese as Nan Huairen. An accomplished mathematician and astronomer, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1641, studied in Leuven, Seville and Rome, and reached Macau in 1658. In 1669 the Kangxi Emperor set a public test to compare European and Chinese astronomy, Verbiest succeeded in all three tasks, and he was installed as Head of the Mathematical Board and Director of the Observatory. He corrected the Chinese calendar and was later asked to rebuild and re-equip the Beijing Ancient Observatory. He became a close friend of the Kangxi Emperor, who asked him for instruction in geometry, philosophy and music, worked as a diplomat, cartographer and translator, wrote more than thirty books, and in the 1670s designed what some claim to be the first self-propelled vehicle.