Maria Mitchell was a pioneering astronomer and a lot of "firsts" for women in science.
Today 204 years ago, a wee baby girl was born to the Mitchell family, who unbeknownst to them would literally change the world. Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts to William and Lydia Mitchell, who would go on to have a total of 10 kids. Maria was the third.
But among her parents, Mitchell's father, an astronomer and teacher, was instrumental in who she was to become: first female astronomer in the United States and the first American scientist to discover a comet. Both her parents, who were Quakers, advocated equal education for girls but it was her father who significantly contributed to her education as a young woman, the National Women's History Museum reported.
The Early Beginnings of Maria Mitchell
Mitchell was a true advocate of education for women. At the tender age of 16, after completing her education at Cyrus Peirce's School for Young Ladies, she opened a school for girls that would teach them math and science. She would also assist her father in rating chronometers for the Nantucket whaling fleet. By 1936, Mitchell started work as a librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum and would then spend 20 more years reading and observing the universe at night.
Many Firsts: Amazing Facts About the Woman Who Discovered Miss Mitchell's Comet
1. Mitchell was the first American scientist to discover a comet.
On October 1, 1847, atop the roof of the Pacific Bank, Mitchell saw a new "telescopic comet" five degrees above the polar star using a two-inch telescope. Her findings were initially published in the journal of Britain's Royal Astronomical Society on November 12 of that year and enabled her to claim the gold medal offered by Danish King Frederick VI to anyone who would first see a new comet detectable only by a telescope anywhere in the world, Nature reported.
While Mitchell's discovery was closely matched by astronomers in Italy, Germany and Britain, her claim to it was championed by Harvard University's president at the time, Edward Everett, who argued her case in several scientific journals and personally wrote to the Danish consul in Washington DC. The discovery was then named "Miss Mitchell's Comet."
2. The first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The discovery of "Miss Mitchell's Comet" brought the young female astronomer worldwide fame. At 32 years old, she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and also the first woman to enter the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
3. Mitchell was likely one of the first professional women to be hired by the US government.
Around the same time, Mitchell was employed by the US government to make calculations for a US Coastal Survey project. By 1949, she was appointed a computer for the "American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac" and within a year was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mitchell received a large equatorial telescope from a group of prominent American women led by Elizabeth Peabody in 1858, Britannica reported. Her work was also promoted by a number of feminists as she later traveled to Europe to further study the stars.
4. Mitchell was the first director of the Vassar College Observatory.
When Vassar College opened in 1865 in Poughkeepsie, New York, it appointed Mitchell as their director. Reluctantly but with the support of her father, she accepted the position of director of the observatory and professor of astronomy. Her students included scientist and logician Christine Ladd-Franklin, who was later known for contributions to the theory of color vision and Ellen Swallow Richards, a chemist and founder of the home economics movement in the US.
5. Mitchell was the first to find that sunspots were whirling vertical cavities and not clouds.
Mitchell's years of peering into the telescope also helped pioneer in the daily photography of sunspots. IN fact, she was also the first to discover that sunspots were in fact not clouds but instead were whirling vertical cavities. She would also study comets, nebulae, solar eclipses, and even the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter.
