Born as Rudolf Maximilian Höll in Selmecbánya, Hont County, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Slovakia),[5] but later changed his surname to Hell.

[5][7] Hell with another Jesuit priest, János Sajnovics tried to explore the already widely discussed but insufficiently documented affinity between the language of the Sami, Finns and the Hungarians during and after their residency in Vardø.

(Demonstratio idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse, 1770 Copenhagen)[1][8][9] Hell became the director of the Vienna Observatory in 1756.

This society also funded the publication of his 1770 account of the Venus passage Observatio transitus Veneris ante discum Solis die 3.

[11] There was some controversy about Hell's observations of the transit of Venus because he stayed in Norway for eight months, collecting non-astronomical scientific data about the arctic regions for a planned encyclopedia (which never appeared, in part due to the suppression of the Jesuit order).