Astronomer Maria Mitchell from an 1851 portrait by H. Dassell.
Today the birthday of the woman
who many consider the first professional female scientist in the world. Maria
Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
All of you with dirty minds can compose your own limerick now.
She was raised as one of 10 children
in a Quaker family and was a distant cousin of Benjamin
Franklin. Her father William was an amateur astronomer who
believed that observation of natural phenomena revealed the glory
of God’s plan. Alone among her siblings young Maria was
captivated by her father’s enthusiasm. At an early age she began reading his
books and recording his observations. Her father was her best teacher.
Maria got what formal education
was then available to young women at Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce’s
School for Young Ladies, where she impressed the schoolmaster with
her diligence so much that he kept her on as an assistant after she
completed her course work. In 1835-38 she operated her own school.
The following year she was hired by
the Nantucket Atheneum as a librarian.
She pursued a self-directed program of education from the volumes in her
charge. She worked there for 18 years. Meanwhile, she continued to assist her
father. Together they made observations of stars for use in celestial navigation and surveyed
the coastline of Nantucket Island, both of which were very useful for
local mariners.
Mitchell as a young woman.
Shortly after beginning her career
at the Atheneum, Mitchell was expelled from her local Friends Society
for expressing doubts and misgivings. She had little use for religious
dispute. Like her father, she found her God in nature. She shifted
her attendance to the Unitarian congregation, but did not become a member.
The Atheneum provided intellectual
and even spiritual nourishment itself. It hosted lectures by the leading
lights of the day, including key figures in Transcendentalism,
anti-slavery, and early feminist causes such as Bronson Alcott, Henry
David Thoreau, William Agassiz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lucy
Stone, William Ellery Channing, Horace Greeley, and Theodore
Parker. Many were guests in the Mitchell home and Emerson, among
others, was invited to view the heavens through Maria’s telescope.
Mitchell’s life changed in the
autumn of 1847. One night she observed an unusual blurry object in the night
sky through her telescope. She noted its precise location. The
following night she discovered it had moved, confirming her suspicion that the
object was a comet. The discovery of Comet Mitchell (C1847 VI),
or Miss Mitchell’s Comet, as it came to be popularly known, made
her an instant celebrity. She was awarded a gold medal by King
Fredrick VII of Denmark for being the first person ever to discover
a comet that could not be observed with the naked eye.
Mitchell's certificate of election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She also received honors at
home. In 1848 Mitchell was elected as the first female member of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1850 to the new American
Association for the Advancement of Science. The latter organization’s
leading figure, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Superintendent of the United
States Naval Observatory, helped her secure a commission from
the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office calculating tables
of positions of Venus.
Mitchell also used her fame
to lend support to the causes of women and abolitionism. She was
a friend and supporter of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and
Lucy Stone. Later in life, in 1873 she was a founder and early
president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women.
To show that she would not support slavery, she refused to wear any cotton
garments tainted by the misery of enslaved persons.
In 1857 Mitchell gave up her
position at the Atheneum. She accepted the invitation of Chicago
banker General H. K. Swift to become a traveling
companion to his daughter Prudence. It was Mitchell’s first real
chance to travel beyond Massachusetts. She first toured the American
West and South, where firsthand exposure to slavery
encouraged her increasing abolitionist fervor.
Mitchell in middle age.
Then she accompanied Prudence and
author Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family on the Grand Tour of Europe.
She found herself a greater celebrity on the continent than at home. She
was introduced to many of the leading scientists and given personal tours
of observatories in Greenwich and Cambridge. After some
difficulty she was even given admittance to the Vatican Observatory. She
latter commented, “I did not know that my heretic feet must not enter the
sanctuary, that my woman’s robe must not brush the seats of learning.”
Upon her return to the States Matthew
Vassar asked her to join the faculty of his new college, the
first to offer women “the same education, with the same standards, as that
offered in men's colleges.” Despite the founder’s support the Board of
Trustees resisted the appointment of women to the faculty for
several years. Mitchell finally became the first female professor in
1865. She remained on the faculty until 1888.
For the most part, her association
with Vassar College for Women was a happy one. She oversaw the construction
of a modern observatory of which she was named Director so that she
could continue her own observations and research in addition to her teaching
duties. But there were challenges. When she discovered that she was
being paid less than new male instructors just beginning their careers,
she demanded equal pay. After a struggle she got it. Baptist members of
the Board of Trustees also tried to have her dismissed for being “a rank
Theodore Parker Unitarian.” She beat back that challenge, too.
Meanwhile Mitchell continued to reap
honors. In 1869 she became one of the first three women elected to the
prestigious American Philosophical
Society, founded by her cousin Ben Franklin. In 1887 Columbia College in New York City awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Science and Philosophy.
Mitchell retired from Vassar
after the 1888 school year. The following June she died in Lynn,
Massachusetts at the age of 70. She was buried next to her father on her
beloved Nantucket.
An early souvenir post card of the Maria Mitchell Memorial and Observatory on Nantucket Island.
In 1908 the Maria Mitchell
Society opened the then state of the art Maria Mitchell Observatory
on the island. The institution continues to keep her legacy alive and
provides science education opportunities to generations of young people,
many of the young women.
