Mary Somerville (Born on December 26, 1780, Jedburgh,- Died on November 28, 1872, Naples) was both a Scottish writer and scientist at a time when women’s participation in science was discouraged. She translated and popularized Laplace’s celestial mechanics and led John Couch Adams to seek and discover the planet Neptune.
Quick Facts: Mary Somerville
- Known for: Scientific work in mathematics, astronomy and geography, and gifted science writing
- Born: December 26th, 1780 in Jedburgh, Scotland
- Parents: William George Fairfax and Margaret Charters Fairfax
- Died: November 29, 1872, in Naples, Italy
- Education: A year of formal education, but Somerville was primarily home-educated and self-taught
- Published works: Physical Geography (1848), personal memories of Mary Somerville (1873, after her death)
- Spouse (s): Samuel Greig (m 1804-1807.); William Somerville (m. 1812-1860)
- Awards: Honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1833), Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (1869), elected to the American Philosophical Society (1869)
- Children: Two sons with Grieg (one surviving, Barrister Woronzow Grieg, d until adulthood 1865.), Three Daughters (Margaret (1813-1823), Martha (1815), Mary Charlotte (1817) and a son who was born in 1815 died in childhood) with Somerville
The Early Life of Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville was born Mary Fairfax in Jedburgh, Scotland, on December 26, 1780, the fifth of seven children of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax and Margaret Charters Fairfax. Only two of her brothers survived and her father was away at sea until adulthood, so Maria spent her first years in the small town of Burntisland being taught by her mother at home.
When her father returned from the sea, he discovered that 8- or 9-year-old Mary could not read simple sums. He sent her to an elite boarding school, Miss Primrose School in Musselburgh.
Miss Primrose was not a good experience for Maria and she was sent home in just one year. She began to educate herself, taking music and painting classes, instructions in handwriting and arithmetic. She learned to read French, Latin, and Greek largely on her own.
At the age of 15, Mary noticed some algebraic formulas used as decorations in a fashion magazine, and on her own, she started studying algebra to make sense of them. She furtively received a copy of Euclid’s “Elements of Geometry” about her parents’ opposition.
Marriage and family life
In 1804 Mary Fairfax married-under pressure from families to her cousin, Captain Samuel Greig, a Russian naval officer who lived in London. They had two sons, only one of whom grew up to be the future Barrister Woronzow Grieg.
Samuel also turned against Mary studying mathematics and science, but after he died in 1807, followed by the death of her son-in-law, she found herself with the opportunity and financial resources to pursue her math interests.
She returned to Scotland with Woronzow and began studying astronomy and mathematics seriously. On the advice of William Wallace, a math teacher at a military school, she acquired a library of books on math. She started posing with a math magazine to solve math problems, and in 1811 won a medal for a solution she submitted.
She married Dr. William Somerville in 1812, another cousin. Somerville was the head of the Army Medical Department in London and he warmly supported her study, writing, and contact with scientists.
Scientific Attempts
Four years after her marriage, Mary Somerville and her family moved to London. Her social environment included the leading scientific and literary lights of the day, including Ada Bryon and her mother Maria Edgeworth, George Airy, John and William Herschel, George Peacock, and Charles Babbage.
Mary and William had three daughters (Margaret, 1813-1823; Martha, born 1815, and Mary Charlotte, born 1817), and a son who died in childhood. They also traveled extensively in Europe.
In 1826 Somerville papers started on the publication of scientific issues based on their own research. After 1831 she began to write about the ideas and works of other scientists as well. A book, “The Linking of Physical Sciences,” contained a discussion of a hypothetical planet that could affect the orbit of Uranus.
This is what John Couch Adams asked for the planet Neptune, which he is looking for and is credited as a co-discoverer. Mary Somerville’s translation and extension of Pierre Laplace’s “Celestial Mechanics” in 1831 won her recognition and success: the same year,
British Prime Minister Robert Peel awarded her a £200 citizen annuity annually. In 1833, Somerville and Caroline Herschel were named honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society, the first women to be recognized. Prime Minister Melbourne increased her salary to 300 pounds in 1837.
William Somerville’s health deteriorated and in 1838 the couple moved to Naples, Italy. She stayed there for most of the rest of her life, work, and publishing. In 1848, Mary Somerville published “Physical Geography”, a book for 50 years in schools and universities; though at the same time, it preached a sermon against them to York Cathedral.
William Somerville died in 1860. In 1869, Mary Somerville published yet another major work that was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society and became the chosen American Philosophical Society.
Mary Somerville Death and legacy
In 1868, four years before her death, at 91, she was the first person to sign John Stuart Mill’s unsuccessful petition to allow the female vote. In her memoirs, Mary highlighted the difficulty she had in her life to be able to study and warned about how adverse British laws were for women.
She was an intense advocate of female education and greater access to higher education. In 1875, astronomer Maria Mitchell heard from a colleague, president of a university, that he would only hire a female scientist if she was as good as Mary Somerville “.
Mary Somerville died in Naples on November 29, 1872, and was buried in the city’s English Cemetery. The following year, his autobiography was published. About 10,000 objects make up the Somerville Collection at the Bodleian Library and at Somerville College, Oxford, with published writings and works, in addition to correspondence with the family, with scientists and writers and close friends, such as Ada Lovelace.
Somerville College was named after Mary, as was the Somerville House in Burntisland, where she lived. In Brisbane, Australia, there is Somerville House, a high school for girls. The Somerville Club was founded in London in 1878.
An asteroid discovered on September 21, 1987, by E. Bowell, at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, was named after him, the 5771 Somerville. Somerville Crater is a small crater located on the moon, east of the Langrenus crater.
Mary Somerville Quotes
- The moral disposition of the age appears in the refinement of conversation. – Mary Somerville
- No circumstance in the natural world is more inexplicable than the diversity of form and color in the human race. – Mary Somerville
- A complete acquaintance with Physical Astronomy can only be attained by those who are well versed in the higher branches of mathematical and mechanical science: such alone can appreciate the extreme beauty of the results, and of how these results are obtained.
- However profoundly we may penetrate the depths of space, there still remain innumerable systems, compared with which, those which seem so mighty to us must dwindle into insignificance, or even become invisible.
- There is a wide distinction between the degree of mathematical acquirement necessary for making discoveries, and that which is requisite for understanding what others have done.
Mary Somerville Books
- 1825 “The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum”
- 1831 Mechanism of the Heavens. Publisher John Murray
- 1832 “A Preliminary Dissertation on the Mechanisms of the Heavens”
- 1834 Connection of the Physical Sciences
- 1848 Physical Geography
- 1869 Molecular and Microscopic Science
- 1874 “Personal recollections, from early life to old age, of Mary Somerville”