Abstract
On 28 July 1897, Miss Florence Taylor, a young woman who was probably a school teacher by profession, delivered a lecture to the newly refounded Leeds Astronomical Society. It was entitled ‘Mary Somerville, the great Woman Astronomer and Mathematician’, and when published in the Society’s Transactions, formed part of that genre of literature in which a person of a younger generation seeks inspiration and direction from the achievements of an illustrious forbear.
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Notes
- 1.
Florence Taylor, ‘Mary Somerville, the Great Woman Astronomer and Mathematician’, published lecture, 28 July 1897, in Leeds Astronomical Society Journal and Transactions, 5 (1897), 33–37.
- 2.
Cambridge University Observatory Syndicate Report, 1882. See Roger Hutchins, A Mismatch of Ideals and Resources: British University Observatories c. 1820–1939 (Ashgate Press, Aldershot, 2002), Chapter II.
- 3.
Peggy Kidwell, ‘Women in Astronomy’, in History of Astronomy. An Encyclopedia, ed. John Lankford (Garland, New York, 1997), 564–567.
- 4.
For a wider insight into this ‘Grand Amateur’ tradition, see Allan Chapman, The Victorian Amateur Astronomer. Independent Astronomical Research in Britain, 1820–1920 (Praxis–Wiley, Chichester and New York, 1998).
- 5.
The ongoing strategy of the Whigs to curtail monarchical power runs through Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Harper Collins, London, 1998).
- 6.
Chapman, The Victorian Amateur Astronomer [n. 4], 14–18.
- 7.
Alan H. Batten, Resolute and Undertaking Characters: The Lives of Wilhelm and Otto Struve (Reidel, Dordrecht, etc., 1988). See also Z.K. Sokolovskya, ‘Friedrich G.W. Struve’ and ‘Otto W. Struve’, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.C. Gillespie, vols. 13–14 (Scribner’s, New York, 1981), 108–121, for essay articles on individuals. A. Chapman, ‘The Astronomical Revolution’ (in nineteenth-century Germany), in Möbius and his Band. Mathematics and Astronomy in Nineteenth-century Germany, ed. John Fauvel, Raymond Flood and Robin Wilson (Oxford University Press, 1993), 34–77; also A. Chapman, ‘The Professionalization of Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Europe’ (10,000 words), Enciclopedia Italiana , Vol. VII, Storia della scienza (Rome, 2003).
- 8.
See Ref. [1].
- 9.
Doron Swade, The Cogwheel Brain. Charles Babbage and the Quest to build the First Computer (Little, Brown & Company, London, 2000), 155–171. Maboth Moseley, Irascible Genius. A Life of Charles Babbage, Inventor (Hutchison, London, 1964), 155–66. For a wider history of the scientific interests of women, see Patricia Phillips, The Scientific Lady. A Social History of Women’s Scientific Interests, 1520–1918 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1990), 207–209 (for Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville).
- 10.
Mary Somerville, On the Mechanism of the Heavens (London, 1831), p.lxvi. Caroline Herschel was also acknowledged in Mary Somerville, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 3rd edn. (London, 1836), Section XXXVI ‘Fixed Stars’, p.397. Patrick Moore, Caroline Herschel, Reflected Glory (William Herschel Society, 1988).
- 11.
Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel, I (Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, 1912). See Herschel’s note for 1771, p.xxi, for income.
- 12.
Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, ed. Mrs John Herschel (London, 1879), 40. The Herschel Papers, now preserved in Cambridge, show that from quite early in Caroline’s life in England, she and her brother William privately corresponded in English.
- 13.
Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel [n. 12], 50, 75.
- 14.
Caroline Herschel, Catalogue of Stars from Mr Flamsteed’s Observations contained in the second volume of the Historia Coelestis and not inserted in the British Catalogue (Royal Society, London, 1798).
- 15.
Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age of Mary Somerville. With Selections from her Correspondence by her Daughter, Martha Somerville (London, 1873), 105.
- 16.
Barthelmy Faujas de Saint Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784 (Paris, 1797), transl. Sir Archibald Geikie, (Glasgow, 1907), 63–65.
- 17.
Sir John Herschel to Dr William Somerville, 17 July 1830 (correct date, 1835), in Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections [n. 15], 217. This letter is clearly misdated, for Mary Somerville’s election as Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society did not occur until 1835: see Mary Somerville to Augustus de Morgan, 20 February 1835, expressing her pleasure at being so elected: R.A.S. Letters, 1835. Moreover, Herschel’s address on his letter of 17 July 1835—‘Feldhausen’, Cape Town—was his residence between 1834 and 1838. In July 1830 he was living in England, not ‘Feldhausen’, Cape Town.
- 18.
Mary Somerville to Caroline Herschel, 16 April 1835, reproduced in Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel [n. 12], 274.
- 19.
Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Hersche l [n. 1], 75.
- 20.
Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections [n. 15], 75.
- 21.
Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections [n. 15], 84.
- 22.
Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections [n. 15], 176.
References
Agnesi, M. G. (1718–1799). Encyclopaedia Britannica, (pp. 1929–1930). I, 350 XIV edn. London and New York.
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Chapman, A. (2015). Mary Somerville and Her Influence. In: Mary Somerville and the World of Science. SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09399-4_1
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