Queen of Science: Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville

by Mary Somerville, Dorothy McMillan (Introduction)

Born in Jedburgh in 1780, Mary Fairfax was the daughter of one of Nelson's captains, and in common with most girls of her time and station she was given the kind of education which prizes gentility over ability. Nevertheless, she taught herself algebra in secret, and made her reputation in celestial mechanics with her 1831 translation of Laplace's "Mecanique celeste" as "The Mechanism of the Heavens." As she was equally interested in art, literature, and nature Somerville's lively memoirs give a fascinating picture of her life and times from childhood in Burntisland to international recognition and retirement in Naples. She tells of her friendship with Maria Edgeworth and of her encounters with Scott and Fenimore Cooper. She remembers comets and eclipses, high society in London and Paris, Charles Babbage and his calculating engine, the Risorgimento in Italy, and the eruption of Vesuvius. Selected by her daughter and first published in 1973, these are the memoirs of a remarkable woman who became one of the most gifted mathematicians and scientists of the 19th century. Oxford's Somerville College was named after her, and the present volume, re-edited by Dorothy McMillan, draws on manuscripts owned by the college and offers the first unexpurgated edition of these revelatory writings. Edited and introduced by Dorothy McMillan.

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Mary Fairfax Somerville was a Scottish science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in science was discouraged. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel.

Reviews

[Raj · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm finding it difficult to sum this book up. Despite the author being intimately familiar with science, particularly maths and astronomy, this very definitely isn't a science book. It doesn't even really talk very much about the difficulties Somerville faced in her studies and in being accepted in the scientific world, despite an unsympathetic family and first husband in her youth.

What it is, is a very interesting portrait of a fairly well-to-do British family in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is the kind of family that can hobnob with royalty and popes (Mary Somerville recounts meeting at least two) and spend their year wandering around Europe, staying with wealthy families on country estates for months on end. At one point, it is mentioned that the Somervilles do lose the bulk of their fortune, but there are no details, and it doesn't seem to make that much difference to their lives.

Somerville is quite the scientific pioneer, in her translation and popular science writing work, and she mentions being granted honorary and associate membership of many scientific bodies. I felt it was entirely unfair that these memberships weren't full (because the bodies at the time didn't allow women to be members), but Somerville herself never mentions the point at all. I don't know what she'd make of the fact that she's going to feature on the £10 note from the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2017.

She was a life-long liberal (and, indeed, Liberal-with-a-capital-L), and very fond of animals, putting her name to various attempts in Italy (where she spent most of the later part of her life) to create legislative protection for them. In other ways, she perhaps wouldn't be considered liberal to modern eyes, being firmly behind the adventure of empire, believing it to be "civilising" to the native peoples, and lamenting the fact that black men were given the vote before white women. We can't be too harsh on her, as these were attitudes that were very difficult to avoid in the era that she lived, and for her time, she was indeed a very progressive person.

Somerville wrote her memoirs in the last few years of her life, and they were edited and published by her daughter after her death. This isn't that book; the current editor has taken the published text, along with the original manuscripts of the various drafts and drawn together a new text synthesising all of the above (clearly labelling parts of the text that were drawn from the manuscripts). This is a very interesting insight into the editing process, looking at what Somerville and, then her daughter, felt fit to include or exclude.

So an interesting sketch of a particular part of a society that is now distant from us in time and attitudes, but not exactly a salacious warts 'n' all autobiography.

[Cybele36]

What an incredible life she had! I highly recommend this book.

[Helen McClory]

Hard to give a star rating to someone's personal musings on their long life. A woman of her time as well as ahead of it, Somerville taught herself algebra (to her family and first husband's consternation), created books meant to share knowledge of the opening fields of astronomy, maths, geography and so on, witnessed history taking place in Italy, sent maths advice to Ada Lovelace, supported laws protecting animals from cruelty, was in later life a suffragette - but was at the same time a horrible snob (talking in venerating tones of the 'better classes' and the royal families of Europe), utterly in favour of the rapacious actions of the British Empire in 'taming the savages'. She also at one point deplores the fact that the freed male slaves in America were given the vote before the 'well-educated women' (ie. privileged white women).

White Feminism (tm) has been around a long, long time. But sort of interesting to see it all up close.