Foundation of the Lisbon Polytechnic School Astronomical Observatory in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Step Towards Establishing a University

Abstract

This paper focuses on the establishment of the Astronomical Observatory at the Lisbon Polytechnic School (AOLPS) in the 1870s and explores its interplay with the launching of an astrophysics research programme at this school. In the late nineteenth century, the establishment of an astrophysics research programme represented a challenge to university observatories. As national observatories were mostly concerned with meridian astronomy, astrophysics provided university observatories with the chance to assume the leadership in this new branch of astronomical science. Yet, in the case of Lisbon Polytechnic School (LPS), the option for an astrophysics research programme can be related to academic prestige and capacity to influence scientific and educational policies at a national scale in its plea for a university status. Indeed, this institution was eventually transformed into the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, in 1911, in the aftermath of the Republican revolution. The inability of AOLPS to identify itself as a research institution and to fulfil the expectations behind its creation resulted from the higher education institutional context in which it emerged. In a peripheral country, where scientific professions scarcely existed, the main educational motivation of faculties of science was to provide applied education to students and prospective civil servants. In this context, there was little room to implement an educational policy based upon research.