Jorge Juan

For other uses, see Jorge Juan (disambiguation).

Jorge Juan y Santacilia
Portrait of Jorge Juan y Santacilia, work by Rafael Tegeo. 1828. (Naval Museum of Madrid).
Born	(1713-01-05)January 5, 1713 Monforte del Cid (baptized), Alicante, Spain
Died	June 21, 1773(1773-06-21) (aged 60) Madrid, Spain
Other name	"The Spanish Sage"
Employer	Spanish Navy
Military career
Allegiance	Hispanic Monarchy
Branch	Royal Navy (Real Armada)
Rank	Squadron Commander (Jefe de Escuadra) of the Royal Navy
Awards	Commander of Aliaga in the Religion of Saint John
Fields	Astronomy
Status	Nobility

Jorge Juan y Santacilia (Novelda, January 5, 1713 – Madrid, June 21, 1773) was an eminent Spanish seaman, naval engineer and scientist.

He was one of the leading initiators of the Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century, and made important contributions in the fields of geodesy, naval architecture, astronomy and mathematics. He is known for succeeding in measuring the length of the terrestrial meridian during the Hispano-French Geodesic Mission, demonstrating that the Earth is flattened at the poles.

Jorge Juan worked as a spy for the Spanish government in England, winning there the trust of high-ranking military commanders, and even of the prime minister. During his mission he was able to copy, piece by piece, the designs of English ships, and to recruit a large number of technicians and specialists in the construction of ships and other items, who took part in the reform of the Spanish naval model. However, owing to political matters, his shipbuilding models were replaced by the French model.

Shortly before his death, Jorge Juan wrote a harshly critical letter to Charles III of Spain predicting grave losses if the French model was implemented, as would indeed happen at the Battle of Trafalgar 32 years later, when the English ships, inspired by the plans and studies that he himself had made, defeated a heavy and antiquated Hispano-French fleet, which, to make matters worse, was commanded by a French Vice Admiral who precipitated the disaster of the fleet with his inexplicable actions.

Biography

The son of Bernardo Juan y Canicia and Violante Santacilia y Soler, he was born on January 5, 1713, on the family estate "El Hondón" (today known as "El Fondonet") between two and three in the afternoon. On the occasion of the tercentenary of his birth, a multitude of arguments were put forward regarding his place of birth. What is certain is that, despite his birth in his family home of "El Hondón", belonging to the municipal district of Novelda, his baptism took place in Monforte del Cid, this being the town that appears in the only document found concerning his birth, the letter of admission to the Order of Malta, in which he states in his own handwriting: «I am a native of the Universidad of Monforte». "A circumstance that confused many of his biographers and even gave rise to controversies, now unnecessary, between those of one town and the other, who dispute the homeland of the man who so greatly enlightened the sciences."

Birthplace of Jorge Juan, "El Fondonet". Photograph taken on the occasion of the tercentenary of the scientist's birth.

He was three years old when he lost his father, and he received his early schooling at the college of the Society of Jesus in Alicante under the tutelage of his uncle Don Antonio Juan, Canon of the collegiate church. Shortly afterwards, his other paternal uncle, Don Cipriano Juan, a Knight of the Order of Malta—a condition that entailed lifelong celibacy—who was at that time Bailiff of Caspe, took charge of his education, sending him to Zaragoza to study Grammar there, which at that time constituted preparatory instruction for other higher studies. Mathematical science was one of the most important subjects in the education of a midshipman of the 18th century.

In 1729, at sixteen years of age, he returned to Spain to apply for admission to the Royal Company of Midshipmen (Real Compañía de Guardias Marinas), a military naval school founded by Patiño in 1717 in Cádiz. After six months of waiting while attending as an auditor, he entered the Academy of Midshipmen of Cádiz in 1730, where modern technical and scientific studies were taught, with subjects such as geometry, trigonometry, astronomical observations, navigation, dead-reckoning calculations, hydrography, cartography, etc., completing a humanistic education with other classes in drawing, music and dance. He soon acquired a reputation as an outstanding student, being known among his classmates by the nickname Euclid. The advanced theories of Newton were known and disseminated at this academy, from which highly qualified technicians for the Navy were to emerge. Cádiz was an open door to enlightened Europe, to the encyclopedist currents and to trade with America, in an eighteenth-century Spain that resisted the advance of new ideas. Voltaire himself had a wine trading house in Cádiz.

All this must have influenced the education of the young Jorge Juan, who in 1734, at 21 years of age, completed his studies as a Midshipman, having sailed for three years in the Mediterranean, taking part in numerous expeditions, whether to punish pirates, or in the Oran campaign, or in the squadron that escorted the then Infante Don Carlos, who would later become Charles III of Spain, to Naples to place him on the throne. Among his other masters in the art of navigation, he had as his general the Marquis of Mari, his captain at the Academy of Cádiz, and as his commanders the Count of Clavijo, the celebrated Don Blas de Lezo and Don Juan José Navarro, later Marquis of la Victoria.

As a cadet he took part in the 1732 expedition against Oran and in the 1734 Naples campaign. That same year he was appointed by Philip V to take part, together with Antonio de Ulloa, in the expedition organized by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris to measure one degree of the terrestrial meridian arc on the equatorial line in South America, specifically in the Real Audiencia of Quito, former Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Ecuador and Peru). During the expedition it was determined that the shape of the Earth is not perfectly spherical, and the degree of flattening of the Earth was measured.

Jorge Juan remained nineteen years in America studying the organization of those territories on behalf of the Crown. Upon his return, Ferdinand VI promoted him to ship-of-the-line captain.

Aware that the Spanish navy was beginning to become outdated, in 1748 the Marquis of la Ensenada commissioned him to travel to England on espionage work in order to learn the new English naval techniques.

His mission consisted of reporting on British advances in shipbuilding and importing them, also hiring experts from the Thames shipyards who were willing to establish a school in Spain. He adopted the false identity of Mr. Josues. In less than a week he achieved what the inexperienced ambassador had not managed in years. He even met Admiral George Anson and Prime Minister John Russell, and shared a table with them. The latter would shortly afterwards order the police to hunt him down as a spy. His reports, by means of ciphered letters, convinced Ensenada even more of the need to change policy and to focus efforts on building a powerful and modern fleet. Jorge Juan sensed, as Ensenada did, that sooner or later supremacy of the seas would be settled against the English fleet and that, without a change in the Navy, there would be no America. He reported on shipbuilding, which proved to be more antiquated than that of Antonio Gaztañeta used in Spain, and on the modern division of skilled labor; he copied piece by piece the designs of ships and the research on sealing wax and the first applications of steam engines for cleaning harbors, among other pre-industrial uses. He also reported on concrete plans by the English to attack America.

In Spain the expenditure on timber was enormous compared with the efficient English system and the quality and durability of its rigging, sails and other components. Jorge Juan even made his own improvements to the system. But the English police began to receive reports, and one of his contacts there was arrested by Minister Bedford himself. Before escaping he still had to go through a thousand adventures and plan the journey of dozens of important naval engineers and skilled workers to Spain with their families to work for the Crown, convincing them that this would not endanger the British naval industry. In June 1750 he managed to cross the English Channel incognito aboard a ship, the Santa Ana de Santoña, and reached Paris.

Upon his return he found that four of the best English shipbuilders, some fifty technicians and dozens of skilled workers were already working in Spain. Under Ensenada's protection, he was appointed Director of the Academy of Midshipmen of Cádiz in 1752. There he would finish testing all his mathematically grounded theories on shipbuilding. The results impressed even the English. He inspected everything from the felling of trees to the modernization of arsenals and shipyards, beginning with Cartagena. He himself took charge of Spanish shipbuilding, renovating the shipyards. His activity produced such good results that a few years later the English returned the visit in order to study and copy his improvements.

However, intrigue triumphed, and in the summer of 1754 it brought about the fall and banishment of the Marquis of la Ensenada, thanks to the efforts of the shrewd British ambassador in Madrid, Benjamin Keene, who according to all sources was the principal instigator of the Marquis's fall. Ensenada was arrested by troops sent by Keene's ally at the Spanish court, Ricardo Wall, accused of having acted without royal authorization in matters of war. The news of his dismissal was received with jubilation by the British. Benjamin Keene, in a dispatch to his government, celebrated Ensenada's fall with a phrase that sums up the importance of the event: "No more ships will be built in Spain!", something that undoubtedly alluded to the ships built using the English system, which Jorge Juan had learned and acquired during his stay in the United Kingdom.

In time, his ideas and those of Jorge Juan would be discarded in favor of the French type of shipbuilding of Francisco Gautier, much more backward, but defended vigorously by Ricardo Wall, who had succeeded Ensenada in some of his offices, and by many of the new ministers, above all by Julián de Arriaga, Secretary of the Navy.

Between 1751 and 1754 he was in Ferrol where, with the military engineer Francisco Llobet, he planned and built the arsenal, and shortly afterwards drew up the first plans of what would become the Barrio de la Magdalena, which would be left in Llobet's hands.

Royal Observatory of Madrid.

In 1757, commissioned by King Charles III, he founded the Royal Observatory of Madrid. He also proposed to the Marquis of la Ensenada the creation of another observatory at the Academy of Midshipmen of Cádiz, an idea later carried out by the Marquis of Ureña, who founded the Royal Observatory of the Navy in San Fernando (Cádiz).

In 1760 he was appointed squadron commander of the Royal Navy. His competence and great worth led to his appointment in 1767 as Ambassador Extraordinary of His Majesty to Morocco, and he succeeded in signing a first treaty of 19 articles that overlooked none of the Crown's important ambitions. There he also gathered secret and relevant information for the Monarch; the King honored him with the direction of the Seminary of Nobles of Madrid in 1773.

In his last years, he drew up a plan for the expedition that would calculate the parallax of the Sun, that is, the exact measurement of its distance from the Earth. The astronomical phenomenon that could best contribute to settling the problem was the transit of Venus across the solar disk. Thus, the expedition led by Vicente Doz left Cádiz in 1769, and on June 3 they measured the astronomical phenomenon from the coast of California. The results among the different measurements were perfect and put an end to the problem of the exact determination of the scale of the solar system.

He was closely linked (from the age of twelve) to the Order of the Knights of Malta through his uncle, who held one of the highest offices of the order. Jorge Juan would eventually receive the title of Commander of Aliaga of the Order of the Knights of Malta.

To such diligence he sacrificed his health, to the extent that the repetition of convulsive bilious colics ended his life in Madrid on June 21, 1773. He was buried with solemnity in the Parish of St. Martin, where an honorific epitaph covers his ashes.

— 

His mortal remains were interred in the Pantheon of Illustrious Sailors of San Fernando (Cádiz) on May 2, 1860.

Measurement of the terrestrial meridian with La Condamine

Main article: French Geodesic Mission

In 1734, Philip V received a request from his cousin King Louis XV of France for an expedition of the Académie Royale des Sciences of Paris, made up of Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine, to travel to Quito, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, to measure a meridian arc and obtain the value of a terrestrial degree that could be compared with other measurements carried out by Maupertuis in Lapland. From these measurements, different values would be obtained for the distance corresponding to a given angle on the earth at different latitudes, which would make it possible to determine accurately the not perfectly spherical shape of the Earth. This problem, which had been raised since the Greeks, had become in the 18th century a bitter controversy lasting almost a century over whether the Earth was elongated (at the poles), as claimed by academicians such as Cassini, who were moreover supporters of Cartesian mechanics, or flattened, as defended by Maupertuis and other scholars such as Newton, Halley and Huygens, relying on the theory of universal gravitation (bodies weighed less at the Equator), or on pendulum experiments (the pendulum did not oscillate with the same frequency in different places). The expedition would end the controversy by proving the latter right.

Philip V was an admirer of the French scholars and wished to take part in the undertaking. In a Royal Order of August 20, 1734, he ordered the selection of two of his ablest officers to accompany and assist the French scientists in all the operations of the measurement, with Spain assuming half of the expedition's expenses. Surprisingly, they chose two young midshipmen, Jorge Juan y Santacilia and Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Guiral, who were only twenty-one and nineteen years old and had no military rank, for which reason they were promoted directly to ship lieutenants. Jorge Juan would be the mathematician, Antonio de Ulloa the naturalist.

They left Cádiz on May 26, 1735, in the company of Antonio José de Mendoza Caamaño y Sotomayor, Marquis of Villagarcía, who had just been appointed Viceroy of Peru—Jorge Juan aboard the ship El Conquistador, and Antonio de Ulloa on the frigate Incendio. They arrived at Cartagena de Indias on July 7, but the French did not arrive until November 15, and together they set out on the route through Guayaquil toward Quito.

The measurement of the meridian degree lasted from 1736 to 1744. The system followed consisted of a series of triangulations that required placing markers at chosen points or bases, both on the plains and on summits 5,000 meters high. The cities of Quito and Cuenca bounded the ends of the triangulation; between them, a double chain of parallel mountains made it easier to choose vertices on either side of the great valley that joins them. They decided to split into two groups, Godin with Juan, La Condamine and Bouguer with Ulloa; both groups would carry out the measurements in opposite directions, in order to verify their accuracy. The unit of measurement used was the toise, equivalent to 7 Burgos feet or 1.98 meters. After several checks, these physical observations had to be completed with astronomical ones.

In 1748 Ulloa described in his Relación Histórica del Viaje a la América meridional many of the difficulties and hardships they had to endure. Three times they had to interrupt their work and travel the long road from Quito to Guayaquil by order of the Viceroy in Lima, to resolve matters related to the maritime defense of the Viceroyalty on its coasts and strongholds, fortifying them against English attacks.

Juan established as the value of the meridian degree adjacent to the Equator 56,767,788 toises, in a calculation that proved the most accurate of all those of the expedition. On the basis of this measurement, fifty years later, the meter came to be defined as the new unit of measurement, and with it the decimal metric system was universally adopted.

Finally, after nine years, they returned on different ships in order to ensure that one of the duplicates of the notes and calculations would reach its destination. They embarked at the port of El Callao on the French frigates Lys and Délivrance on October 22, 1744. Jorge Juan arrived at Brest with the Lys on October 31, 1745. From there he went to Paris to exchange views on his work and compare certain particulars observed by him and Godin in their astronomical observations, meeting the celebrated astronomers Marian, Clairaut and La Caille, authors of the formulas they had used so many times. He met Réaumur, inventor of the thermometer, and other celebrated scientists who, together with La Condamine and Bouguer, now returned to their activities, voted him a corresponding member of the Académie royale des Sciences.

Antonio de Ulloa had more difficulties. His frigate was captured by the English, who had declared war on France during the voyage, and he had to throw the compromising documents into the sea, though not those concerning the measurement of the degree, the physical and astronomical observations, and the historical notes. He was taken prisoner near Portsmouth. In his studies on mining he was the first to speak of platina or platinum as a mineral distinct from silver and gold.

On their return to Madrid, Philip V had died, and they were received with indifference at the Navy and at the Secretariat of State. Jorge Juan considered requesting a post in his Order of Malta, but the general of the Navy, Pizarro, an old friend from Chile, introduced them to the Marquis of la Ensenada, who saw in them the ideal people to carry out his naval and armaments policy. From then on began a fruitful period of work and a friendship with the Marquis that would last a lifetime and remain unchanged even after his fall.

Ferdinand VI gladly accepted the choice and appointed them frigate captains, taking an interest in the report Memorias secretas, the confidential part of the mission that had taken them to Ecuador, since it dealt with the political state of those provinces, written with a maturity and liberal spirit surprising for their youth. In addition, Ensenada decided to publish the Observations and the four volumes of the Historical Account, understanding that the work of the two young men would not be complete until its public presentation, which took place in 1748, in a print run of 900 copies (La Condamine's French edition would not appear until 1751). 1749 is the date of publication of the Disertación Histórica y Geográfica sobre el Meridiano de Demarcación entre los dominios de España y Portugal, by Ulloa and Juan, in which, as a result of the knowledge acquired on their voyage to America and the fact that the dimensions of the Earth were now known, it was possible to settle scientifically the question of determining the meridian that Pope Alexander VI had designated as the line of demarcation for the discoveries of both nations, and which was still being negotiated since the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Jorge Juan's Observaciones raised objections, as he accepted as self-evident the system of Copernicus, which still provoked rejection in Rome. But the Jesuit Father Burriel defended his writings, and to avoid censorship it was agreed that the second edition of 1773 would include a preamble by Jorge Juan entitled "Estado de la Astronomía en Europa" ("State of Astronomy in Europe").

Reform of the Navy

File:Ferrol - Jardines de Herrera, monumento a Jorge Juan 3.jpg

Monument to Jorge Juan in Ferrol, La Coruña, Spain.

In March 1749 Jorge Juan was sent to London under the name of Mr. Josues on several secret missions, on behalf of the Marquis of la Ensenada, who for his plans to reform the Navy needed information about everything related to shipbuilding, and wanted to bring to Spain expert builders of ships, sails, cordage, etc. Juan's letters with Ensenada were written in numerical cipher. The secret activity of industrial espionage did not prevent Jorge Juan from being admitted, having just arrived on April 6, as a member of the Royal Society of London, as was Ulloa. After 18 months he had to escape, reaching the French coast disguised as a sailor, but not before managing to take 50 naval technicians to Spain.

He was promoted to ship-of-the-line captain, and from 1750 onward his career was unstoppable. Ensenada had discovered how useful he was for his aims. In the 18th century maritime transport and naval defense were decisive; the country with the best ships would be the one that dominated. Aware of Spain's backwardness, they would focus their efforts on this leading sector. But Juan, disillusioned with the English shipbuilding system, on his return from London devised a new Spanish plan which, approved in 1752, was implemented in the shipyards of Cartagena, Cádiz, Ferrol and Havana, organizing arsenals, building dry docks in Ferrol and Cartagena, and hiring builders such as Bryant and Tournel. There, work was carried out according to a modern industrial criterion of division of labor in the docks, shipyards, furnaces, rigging and canvas factories, etc. Under these standards, ships such as the Oriente and the Aquilón were built.

In 1752 he was appointed director of the Academy of Midshipmen, a post of great responsibility, where Jorge Juan would introduce the most advanced teaching of the time, hiring competent professors and setting aside those he did not consider qualified. He would found the Astronomical Observatory of Cádiz, equipping it with the best instruments of the time and maintaining correspondence on his observations with the Academies of Paris, Berlin and London.

In Cádiz he would have the opportunity and time for new studies, experimenting with mathematical calculations on how to build light and fast yet safe ships. The guidelines he would establish were that the ship must be built optimizing the quantity of timber and ironwork. Likewise, he studied the force of the sea and the wind, building models of vessels that he towed in order to compare their different resistances, and testing with kites the action of the wind on the sails.

He supervised the construction of the docks and organized the arsenals, took charge of the felling of trees for the construction of ships, and solved problems at the Almadén mines and Linares, in the irrigation canals of Murcia and Aragon, and at the cannon factory of Santander; he laid the foundations for a modern cartography of Spain. In June 1754 the King appointed him minister of the General Board of Commerce and Currency (Junta General de Comercio y Moneda).

In Cádiz Jorge Juan founded the Friendly Literary Assembly (Asamblea Amistosa Literaria), which met on Thursdays at his home, where topics of interest contributed by scholars such as Louis Godin, José Aranda, Gerardo Henay, Diego Porcel, José Infante, Francisco Canivell y Vila, José Nájera, Francisco Iglesias, Pedro Virgili and José Carbonell were discussed, in what was intended to be the embryo of a future Academy of Sciences.

Out of discussions on astronomy, artillery, navigation and construction arose the idea of writing his great work Examen Marítimo, which would be published in Madrid fourteen years later, in 1771. This work would be the cornerstone of the theory of shipbuilding, the first written with mathematical calculations. It analyzes the dynamics of the ship, its stability, its relationship with the thrust of the waves, the stresses to which the masts and spars are subjected, etc., on the basis of experimentation. As soon as it appeared, it became known and was translated throughout Europe.

All of Jorge Juan's studies became known beyond the borders, to the point that in 1753 the future admiral Richard Howe came to verify his successes personally, and was surprised by the speed and maneuverability of the Spanish ships.

But unfortunately, after Ensenada's fall, and owing to political matters, the construction model studied by Jorge Juan was gradually replaced by the French model, and Spain's plans for naval recovery stagnated. Shortly before his death, Jorge Juan wrote a very critical letter to Charles III over his blind subordination to the French naval model, predicting grave losses, and adding the following about the state of shipbuilding:

«not only is it useless in all its parts, but I foresee the honor of the arms, vassals and State of His Majesty in inevitable danger of being lost in a single day»

That is precisely what would happen at the Battle of Trafalgar 32 years later, when the light English ships, surely inspired by Jorge Juan's studies, wrecked the heavy and antiquated Hispano-French fleet.

Ambassador Extraordinary to Morocco

King Charles III appointed him Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Morocco for a difficult political mission; once again, confidence in the learned humanist marked him out as the ideal person. Jorge Juan was indispensable throughout three reigns. He departed on February 15, 1767, in the company of Sidi-Hamet-el-Garcel, ambassador of Morocco, with gifts for the Muslim sovereign and with specific instructions regarding his mission.

After more than six months of diplomatic activity he returned, having signed the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Spain and Morocco, of 19 articles, signed on May 28, 1767, in which Spanish aspirations were secured on many points, except for a few which nevertheless did not diminish the success of the mission. He recorded all the details and curiosities of the journey in a handwritten diary.

On his return to Madrid he was appointed to the direction of the Royal Seminary of Nobles, his last post of service.

Works

Observaciones astronomicas y phisicas, 1748

• Compendio de Navegación para el uso de los caballeros Guardias Marinas, Cádiz (1757)
• Diario del viaje a la corte de Marruecos en el año 1768. Descripción de Marruecos (1780)
• Examen Marítimo Theórico Práctico, ó Tratado de Mechanica aplicado á la Construcción, Conocimiento y Manejo de los Navíos y demás Embarcaciones, Madrid (1771)
• Estado de la astronomía en Europa, Madrid (1774)
• Método de levantar y dirigir el mapa o plano general de España, in Memorias del Depósito Hidrográfico, Madrid (1809)

In collaboration with Antonio de Ulloa

• Plan del camino de Quito al río Esmeraldas, según las observaciones astronómicas de Jorge Juan y Antonio de Ulloa (1736–1742)
• Observaciones astronómicas y físicas hechas en los Reinos del Perú (Madrid, 1748)
• Relación histórica del viaje hecho de orden de su Majestad a la América Meridional (Madrid, 1748)
• Disertación Histórica y Geográfica sobre el Meridiano de Demarcación entre los dominios de España y Portugal (1749)
• Noticias Secretas de América, sobre el estado naval, militar y político del Perú y provincia de Quito (1748, published in London in 1826), whose publication was prohibited by the Spanish government.

Titles

• Knight of the Order of Malta
• Commander of Aliaga in the Religion of Saint John.
• Squadron Commander (Jefe de Escuadra) of the Royal Navy.
• Captain of the Company of Gentlemen Midshipmen.
• Director of the Royal Seminary of Nobles.
• Member of His Majesty's Council on the Board of Commerce and Currency.
• Ambassador of the King to the Court of Morocco.
• Councilor of the Royal Academy of San Fernando.
• Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris.
• Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
• Member of the Academy of Paris.

Tributes

Inscription on the tombstone of Jorge Juan y Santacilia

His Excellency Don Jorge Juan y Santacilia, a native of Monforte del Cid, in the Kingdom of Valencia, Knight of the Order of Malta, Chief of the Navy, Captain of the Midshipmen and Director of their School, Rector of the Royal Seminary of Nobles of Madrid, who, after having mastered the sea with ships of a new type and construction, explored Africa as Ambassador to Morocco, traveled across America to survey the shape of the Earth and across Europe to carry out learned investigations, with which he enriched its Academies, such as the Spanish Academy of San Fernando and the French, English and Prussian ones, surrendered to the Lord the life he had received from Him, and which he ennobled with his piety and good conduct, at sixty years of age, in Madrid, on June 21 of the year of the Lord 1773. His grieving siblings Bernardo and Margarita saw to it that a monument was placed and erected, with the consent of the Most Illustrious D. D. Juan Zapata, Marquis of San Miguel de Gros, patron of the chapel.

— (Original in Latin. Spanish translation of the funerary tombstone of D. Jorge Juan y Santacilia)

Others

His image appeared on the reverse of the old ten-thousand-peseta banknotes.

In the province where he was born, Alicante (Spain), he was honored with:

• Jorge Juan Street, which connects the City Hall with the Basilica of Santa María in the City of Alicante
• the secondary school IES Jorge Juan in the City of Alicante
• the city of Denia (Alicante) has dedicated a square to him very close to its port.

• In 1913, on the occasion of the second anniversary of his birth, the city of Novelda erected a monument to his memory made by the Alicante sculptor Vicente Bañuls.
• In Novelda the school CEIP Jorge Juan was dedicated to him.

In the province of Madrid the following are dedicated to his memory:

• Jorge Juan Street, in the Salamanca District of the city of Madrid (Spain). On this street is the Jorge Juan alley.

• Jorge Juan Street in San Sebastián de los Reyes
• Jorge Juan Street in Alcalá de Henares
• Jorge Juan Street in Boadilla del Monte
• In 2012, the Spanish Navy and the City of Madrid dedicated a monument to D. Jorge Juan y Santacilia in the Garden of the Discoveries in the Plaza de Colón.

In the city of Valencia (Spain), Jorge Juan Street in the city's first expansion district (ensanche) was dedicated to him in tribute to his career.

The Municipal Corporation of Ferrol installed a statue dedicated to Jorge Juan next to the Captaincy Palace.

In the Arsenal of Cartagena, Murcia, there is a monument to his memory.

The Spanish Navy dedicated to him a ship of the Churruca class, the Destroyer Jorge Juan (JJ), launched in 1931 and decommissioned in 1963.

In the city of Albacete there is a public sports complex bearing his name, located in La Milagrosa.

File:20061001 - Mitad del Mundo (busto de Jorge Juan y Santacilia).jpg

Bust of Jorge Juan at the tourist site Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, Pichincha, Ecuador.

In Ecuador, at the Ciudad Mitad del Mundo in Quito, there is an obelisk with a bust in his memory next to the monument that marks the exact point through which the equator passes.

In 1974, the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre – Real Casa de la Moneda (located on Jorge Juan Street in Madrid) issued a stamp in tribute to Jorge Juan y Santacilia with a face value of 15 pesetas.

A ONCE lottery coupon of June 20, 2023, was dedicated to Jorge Juan, celebrating the 250th anniversary of his death (June 21, 1773).

The Naval Museum organized an exhibition on the foremost exponent of the enlightened navy—from November 24, 2023, to March 31, 2024. The exhibition, titled "Jorge Juan. El legado de un marino científico" ("Jorge Juan. The Legacy of a Scientist Seaman"), was curated by José María Moreno Martín and Blanca Sazatornil Pinedo. The exhibition commemorated the 250th anniversary of the death of the scientist and spy, covering the main milestones of his life and his most outstanding contributions to the history of 18th-century science.

See also

• Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century
• Jorge Juan Secondary School (Alicante)

Bibliography

• Guillén Tato, Julio F.: (1936) Los tenientes de navío Jorge Juan y Santacilia y Antonio de Ulloa y de Torre-Guiral y la medición del Meridiano. Imprenta de Galo Sáez, Madrid. [1] (in Spanish)
• Abad Navarro, Elías: (1929) La patria de Jorge Juan. Tip. San Francisco, Murcia. [2] (in Spanish)
• Saiz Montes, Luis A. (2002). Las matemáticas usadas por Jorge Juan en la medición de la Tierra (in español) (Facsimile ed.). Editorial Maxtor. España. ISBN 84-95636-95-6.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jorge Juan.

• Bibliotecas de Autor, Jorge Juan y Santacilia Biblioteca Valenciana Digital, Bivaldi
• Jorge Juan y Santacilia at the Real Academia de la Historia
• Jorge Juan at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
• Jorge Juan in the Biblioteca Virtual de Polígrafos of the Fundación Ignacio Larramendi
• Tribute to Jorge Juan with military honors on the 250th anniversary of his death
• Temporary exhibition: Jorge Juan. El legado de un marino científico at the Library of the Naval Museum of Madrid (November 24, 2023, to March 31, 2024)
• Jorge Juan. El sabio español Video by the Provincial Council of Alicante
• Jorge Juan y los ingenieros navales ingleses at the Centro Virtual Cervantes