Nirmal DASS
Father Ferdinand Verbiest, from the manuscript Galerie illustrée de portraits de jésuites, by A. Hamy, 1893.
One of a number of Jesuit missionaries who were sent to China from Rome in the seventeenth century, Father Ferdinand Verbiest was befriended by the K’ang-shi emperor and became one of the foremost astronomers and scientists in China.
Father Ferdinand Verbiest was born in Pittem, a small town in what is now Belgium, and from an early age he studied at
