Maria Mitchell was born August 1, 1818 on the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts.
"We have a hunger of the mind. We ask for all of the knowledge around us and the more we get, the more we desire."
The first acknowledged woman astronomer in the United States.
Courtesy of Wikipedia:
Maria, a first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin, she had nine brothers and sisters. Her parents, William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell, were Quakers.
Maria Mitchell was born into a community unusual for its time in regard to equality for women.
Her parents, like other Quakers, valued education and insisted on giving her the same quality of education that boys received.
The Quaker religion taught, among other things, intellectual equality between the sexes. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months and sometimes years to manage affairs while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women who called the island home. In spite of this, the women of Nantucket still lacked the right to own property or to vote, among other things.
After attending Elizabeth Gardener's small school in her earliest childhood years, Maria attended the North Grammar school, where William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years following the founding of that school, when Maria was eleven, her father built his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. At home, Maria's father taught her astronomy using his personal telescope. At age twelve and a half, she aided her father in calculating the exact moment of annular eclipse. Her father's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies. Later she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before she opened her own school in 1835. One year later, she was offered a job as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum where she worked for eighteen years.
Using a telescope, she discovered the "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (Comet 1847 VI, modern designation is C/1847 T1) on October 1st of 1847. Some years previously, King Frederick VI of Denmark had established gold medal prizes to each discoverer of a "telescopic comet" (too faint to be seen with the naked eye). The prize was to be awarded to the "first discoverer" of each such comet (note that comets are often independently discovered by more than one person).
She duly won one of these prizes, and this gave her worldwide fame, since the only previous woman to discover a comet had been Caroline Herschel.
Maria Mitchell was born into a community unusual for its time in regard to equality for women.
Her parents, like other Quakers, valued education and insisted on giving her the same quality of education that boys received.
The Quaker religion taught, among other things, intellectual equality between the sexes. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months and sometimes years to manage affairs while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women who called the island home. In spite of this, the women of Nantucket still lacked the right to own property or to vote, among other things.
After attending Elizabeth Gardener's small school in her earliest childhood years, Maria attended the North Grammar school, where William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years following the founding of that school, when Maria was eleven, her father built his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. At home, Maria's father taught her astronomy using his personal telescope. At age twelve and a half, she aided her father in calculating the exact moment of annular eclipse. Her father's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies. Later she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before she opened her own school in 1835. One year later, she was offered a job as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum where she worked for eighteen years.
Using a telescope, she discovered the "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (Comet 1847 VI, modern designation is C/1847 T1) on October 1st of 1847. Some years previously, King Frederick VI of Denmark had established gold medal prizes to each discoverer of a "telescopic comet" (too faint to be seen with the naked eye). The prize was to be awarded to the "first discoverer" of each such comet (note that comets are often independently discovered by more than one person).
She duly won one of these prizes, and this gave her worldwide fame, since the only previous woman to discover a comet had been Caroline Herschel.
A Rational Temperament.
Maria's first teacher was a lady for whom she always felt the warmest affection, and in her diary, written in her later years, occurs this allusion to her:
"I count in my life, outside of family relatives, three aids given me on my journey; they are prominent to me: the woman who first made the study-book charming; the man who sent me the first hundred dollars I ever saw, to buy books with; and another noble woman, through whose efforts I became the owner of a telescope; and of these, the first was the greatest."
As a little girl, Maria was not a brilliant scholar; she was shy and slow; but later, under her father's tuition, she developed very rapidly. After her father gave up teaching, Maria was put under the instruction of Mr. Cyrus Peirce, afterwards principal of the first normal school started in the United States. Peirce took a great interest in Maria, especially in developing her taste for mathematical study, for which she early showed a remarkable talent.
The books which she studied at the age of seventeen, as we know by the date of the notes, were Bridge's "Conic Sections," Hutton's "Mathematics," and Bowditch's "Navigator." At that time Prof. Benjamin Peirce had not published his "Explanations of the Navigator and Almanac," so that Maria was obliged to consult many scientific books and reports before she could herself construct the astronomical tables.
Maria Mitchell was an inveterate reader. She devoured books on all subjects.
Rationals (NTs) are the problem solving temperament, particularly if the problem has to do with the many complex systems that make up the world around us. Rationals might tackle problems in organic systems such as plants and animals, or in mechanical systems such as railroads and computers, or in social systems such as families and companies and governments. But whatever systems fire their curiosity, Rationals will analyze them to understand how they work, so they can figure out how to make them work better.
In working with problems, Rationals try to find solutions that have application in the real world, but they are even more interested in the abstract concepts involved, the fundamental principles or natural laws that underlie the particular case. And they are completely pragmatic about their ways and means of achieving their ends.
Rationals don't care about being politically correct.
They are interested in the most efficient solutions possible, and will listen to anyone who has something useful to teach them, while disregarding any authority or customary procedure that wastes time and resources.
She cared but little for general society, and had always to be coaxed to go into company.
Later in life, however, she was much more socially inclined, and took pleasure in making and receiving visits. She could neither dance nor sing, but in all amusements which require quickness and a ready wit she was very happy.
-She became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850.
-She later worked at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, calculating tables of positions of Venus, and traveled in Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.
-She became professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865, the first person (male or female) appointed to the faculty. She was also named as Director of the Vassar College Observatory. After teaching there for some time, she learned that despite her reputation and experience, her salary was less than that of many younger male professors. She insisted on a salary increase, and got it.
-In 1842, she left the Quaker faith and followed Unitarian principles. In protest against slavery, she stopped wearing clothes made of cotton.
-She was friends with various suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. She was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as one of the first women elected to the American Philosophical Society (1869, at this identical meeting Mary Fairfax Somerville and Elizabeth Cabot Carey Agassiz were also elected).
-Maria Mitchell's telescope, is on display in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.
-She died on June 28, 1889, at the age of 70, in Lynn, Massachusetts. She was buried in Lot 411, Prospect Hill Cemetery, Nantucket.
-She became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850.
-She later worked at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, calculating tables of positions of Venus, and traveled in Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.
-She became professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865, the first person (male or female) appointed to the faculty. She was also named as Director of the Vassar College Observatory. After teaching there for some time, she learned that despite her reputation and experience, her salary was less than that of many younger male professors. She insisted on a salary increase, and got it.
-In 1842, she left the Quaker faith and followed Unitarian principles. In protest against slavery, she stopped wearing clothes made of cotton.
-She was friends with various suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. She was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as one of the first women elected to the American Philosophical Society (1869, at this identical meeting Mary Fairfax Somerville and Elizabeth Cabot Carey Agassiz were also elected).
-Maria Mitchell's telescope, is on display in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.
-She died on June 28, 1889, at the age of 70, in Lynn, Massachusetts. She was buried in Lot 411, Prospect Hill Cemetery, Nantucket.
Although she was best known for her astronomical research and professorship at Vassar College, Maria Mitchell did not limit her interests to academia.
She was also a pioneer in establishing women in the sciences, she devoted a great deal of time to finding ways for women everywhere to gain greater freedom and have their rights recognized in society.
In 1872 Mitchell participated in the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. As described in the Association's constitution, the organization hoped:
"to receive and present practical methods for securing to Women higher intellectual, moral, and physical conditions."
In 1875 Mitchell was elected president of the Association, a post she held for two years, presiding over their third congress of women in Syracuse and fourth congress in Philadelphia. Before the fourth congress, Mitchell also held a mid-year meeting of the Association in the Vassar observatory. The astronomer remained active in the Association after her presidency, chairing its science committee and serving as a vice president representing New York until 1888, the year before she died.
In her advocacy for women's rights Mitchell suggested the same methods she encouraged in academics. That is, coming to one's conclusions on one's own terms rather then simply listening to an authority. She once wrote:
Just as Mitchell pressed that students learned the best through deducing and observing for themselves, she advocated that women could find their voice when finally thinking for themselves.
In women's education Mitchell also encouraged the teaching of self-reliance through part-time work.
Most young men worked part time to pay for their education, and the education of women was proving even more expensive then men. For female students to work would both lower the cost of their education, and allow young women skills outside academia or domesticity. As Mitchell described it, for a college to "form, for any young girl, a habit of earning money," gives "her a lifelong advantage."
Her admittance had no precedent, and, the first woman to join the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mitchell was a woman to set precedents rather then to follow them.
She was also a pioneer in establishing women in the sciences, she devoted a great deal of time to finding ways for women everywhere to gain greater freedom and have their rights recognized in society.
In 1872 Mitchell participated in the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. As described in the Association's constitution, the organization hoped:
"to receive and present practical methods for securing to Women higher intellectual, moral, and physical conditions."
In 1875 Mitchell was elected president of the Association, a post she held for two years, presiding over their third congress of women in Syracuse and fourth congress in Philadelphia. Before the fourth congress, Mitchell also held a mid-year meeting of the Association in the Vassar observatory. The astronomer remained active in the Association after her presidency, chairing its science committee and serving as a vice president representing New York until 1888, the year before she died.
In her advocacy for women's rights Mitchell suggested the same methods she encouraged in academics. That is, coming to one's conclusions on one's own terms rather then simply listening to an authority. She once wrote:
"Until women throw off reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their own investigations, when doubts lead them to discovery, the truth they get will be theirs, and their minds will go on unfettered."
Just as Mitchell pressed that students learned the best through deducing and observing for themselves, she advocated that women could find their voice when finally thinking for themselves.
In women's education Mitchell also encouraged the teaching of self-reliance through part-time work.
Most young men worked part time to pay for their education, and the education of women was proving even more expensive then men. For female students to work would both lower the cost of their education, and allow young women skills outside academia or domesticity. As Mitchell described it, for a college to "form, for any young girl, a habit of earning money," gives "her a lifelong advantage."
An example of Mitchell's persistence in seeking equal treatment was her visit in 1856 to the Vatican Observatory during travels in Italy. The astronomer had anticipated visiting the observatory and meeting with Father Angelo Secchi, the Pope's scientific advisor and a pioneer in astrophysics, but, upon her arrival, she was told women were not permitted within the observatory. Mitchell was not discouraged and went to get the necessary permission through U.S. Legation to the Papal States and after two weeks of pressure she was granted permission to enter the observatory, the first woman to do so.
Her admittance had no precedent, and, the first woman to join the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mitchell was a woman to set precedents rather then to follow them.
We especially need imagination in science.
It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but is
somewhat beauty and poetry.
—Maria Mitchell
It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but is
somewhat beauty and poetry.
—Maria Mitchell
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