(26 December 1780 – 28 November 1872) science writer and polymath
Mary Fairfax Somerville studied mathematics and astronomy, at a time when women’s participation in science was discouraged, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel.
Having been requested by Lord Brougham to translate for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, she greatly popularised its form, and its publication in 1831, under the title of The Mechanism of the Heavens, at once made her famous. She stated “I translated Laplace’s work from algebra into common language”.
Her other works are the On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), Physical Geography (1848), which was commonly used as a text book until the early 20th century,[6] and Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869). In 1835, she and Caroline Herschel became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1838 she and her husband went to Italy, where she spent much of the rest of her life. In 1868, four years before her death at age 91, she signed John Stuart Mill’s unsuccessful petition for female suffrage.
Much of the popularity of her writings was due to her clear and crisp style and the underlying enthusiasm for her subject which pervaded them. From 1835 she received a pension of £300 from government. In 1869 she was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
Somerville’s writing influenced James Clerk Maxwell and John Couch Adams. Her discussion of a hypothetical planet perturbing Uranus, in the 6th edition of On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1842), led Adams to look for and discover Neptune.
Somerville’s literary friends included Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Holford, and Joanna Baillie. After receiving a copy of Somerville’s Preliminary Dissertation to the Mechanism of the Heavens (1832), Baillie wrote Somerville, “I feel myself greatly honoured by receiving such a mark of regard from one who has done more to remove the light estimation in which the capacity of women is too often held than all that has been accomplished by the whole Sisterhood of Poetical Damsels & novel-writing Authors.”
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