Maria Mitchell

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Maria Mitchell (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell;<ref name=":3">Template:YouTube</ref> August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, librarian, naturalist, and educator.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1847, she discovered a comet named 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) that was later known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet" in her honor.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite web</ref> She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Christian VIII of Denmark in 1848. Mitchell was the first internationally known woman to work as both a professional astronomer and a professor of astronomy after accepting a position at Vassar College in 1865.<ref name=":6">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":153">Template:Cite book</ref> She was also the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":06">Template:Cite book</ref>

Mitchell is the namesake of the Maria Mitchell Association, the Maria Mitchell Observatory, and the Maria Mitchell Aquarium.

Early years (1818–1846)

Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Lydia Coleman Mitchell, a library worker, and William Mitchell, a schoolteacher and amateur astronomer.<ref name=":03">Template:Cite book</ref> The third of ten children, Mitchell and her siblings were raised in the Quaker religion.<ref name=":06"/> William Mitchell educated all his children about nature and astronomy and her mother's employment at two libraries gave them access to a variety of knowledge.<ref name=":7">Gormley, Beatrice. Maria Mitchell The Soul of an Astronomer, pp 4–6. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, (1995), Template:ISBN.</ref><ref name=":8">Template:Cite book</ref> Mitchell reportedly showed an early interest and talent in astronomy and mathematics. Her father taught her to operate a number of astronomical instruments including chronometers, sextants, refracting telescopes, and Dolland telescopes.<ref name=":03" /><ref name=":7" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mitchell often assisted her father in his work with local seamen and in his observations of the night sky.<ref name=":03" />

Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months, sometimes years, to manage affairs at home while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women of the island.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

After attending Elizabeth Gardner small school as a young child, Mitchell enrolled in the North Grammar school, where her father was the first principal. When Maria Mitchell was 11 years old, her father founded his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father.<ref>Among The Stars: The Life of Maria Mitchell. Mill Hill Press, Nantucket, MA. 2007</ref> In 1831, at the age of 12, Mitchell aided her father in calculating the exact moment of a solar eclipse.<ref>Gormley, Beatrice. Maria Mitchell: The Soul of an Astronomer. Eerdmans Publishing Co, MI. 1995.</ref><ref name=":03" />

File:Mitchell Maria desk.jpg
Photograph of Maria Mitchell by Julia Ward Howe, 1899<ref name="HOWE1900">Howe, Julia Ward. Reminiscences, 1819 – 2020, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1900.</ref>

William Mitchell's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies until she was about the age of 16.<ref name=":06" /> Later, she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before opening her own school in 1835. Mitchell developed experimental teaching methods, which she later employed during her professorship at Vassar College.<ref name=":06" /> She allowed nonwhite children to attend her school, though the local public school was still racially segregated.<ref name="bergland">Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1836, Mitchell began working as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position she held for 20 years.<ref name="bergland" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":06" /> The institution's limited operating hours enabled Mitchell to assist her father with a series of astronomical observations and geographical calculations for the United States Coast Survey and to continue her own education.<ref name=":06" /><ref name=":153" /> Mitchell and her father worked in a small observatory constructed on the roof of the Pacific Bank building with a four-inch equatorial telescope provided by the survey.<ref name=":06" /><ref name=":153" /> In addition to looking for nebulae and double stars, the pair produced latitudes and longitudes by calculating the altitudes of stars and the culminations and occultations of the Moon, respectively.<ref name=":06" />

In 1843, Mitchell converted to Unitarianism, although she did not physically attend a Unitarian Church until more than twenty years later. Her departure from the Quaker faith did not cause a break with her family, with whom she appears to have remained close.<ref name=":04">Template:Cite web</ref> Historians have limited knowledge about this period in Mitchell's life because few of her personal documents remain from before 1846. Members of the Mitchell family believed she destroyed many of her personal documents in order to keep them private, having witnessed personal papers blown through the street by the Great Fire of 1846, and because fear of another fire persisted.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Discovery of "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (1847–1849)

At 10:50 pm on the night of October 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) using a Dollond refracting telescope with three inches of aperture and forty-six-inch focal length.<ref name="FAMOUSAMERICANS2">Tappan, Eva March, Heroes of Progress: Stories of Successful Americans, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921. Cf.pp.54–60</ref><ref name=":10">AJS, 2nd Ser., v. 5, 1848, p. 83, Wm. Mitchell, On the Comet of October 1, 1847.</ref> She had noticed an unknown object flying through the sky in an area where she previously had not noticed any other activity and believed it to be a comet.<ref name=":153"/> The comet later became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet."<ref name=":11">Maria Mitchell, Life, Letters, and Journals, compiled by Phebe Mitchell Kendall, 1896, p. 9 & 19.</ref><ref name=":12">Gormley, Beatrice. Maria Mitchell The Soul of an Astronomer, p 47. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, (1995), Template:ISBN.</ref> She published a notice of her discovery in Silliman's Journal in January 1848 under her father's name.<ref name=":13">Template:Cite web</ref> The following month, she submitted her calculation of the comet's orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer.<ref name=":13" /> Mitchell was celebrated at the Seneca Falls Convention for the discovery and calculation later that year.<ref name=":13" />

On October 6, 1848, Mitchell was awarded a gold medal prize for her discovery by King Christian VIII of Denmark.<ref name=":04"/> This award had been previously established by King Frederick VI of Denmark to honor the "first discoverer" of each new telescopic comet, a comet too faint to be seen with the naked eye.<ref name=":06"/> A question of credit temporarily arose because Francesco de Vico had independently discovered the same comet two days after Mitchell but reported it to European authorities first. Mitchell was declared the first to discover the comet and she was awarded the prize.<ref name=":14">Template:Cite web</ref> The only previous women to discover a comet were the astronomers Caroline Herschel and Maria Margarethe Kirch.

Mitchell's medal was inscribed with line 257 of Book I of Virgil's Georgics: "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" (Not in vain do we watch the setting and the rising [of the stars]).<ref name=":5">Template:Cite web</ref> Though the award was sent via letter in 1848, Mitchell did not physically receive the award in Nantucket until March 1849.<ref name=":15">Template:Cite web</ref> She became the first American to receive this medal and the first woman to receive an award in astronomy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":15" />

Intermediate years (1849–1864)

Woman looking up into a golden telescope, which is standing on a pedestal. She is wearing a black dress with long sleeves.
Portrait of Maria Mitchell by Herminia Borchard Dassel, ca. 1851

Mitchell became a celebrity following her discovery of the comet, with hundreds of newspaper articles written about her in the subsequent decade.<ref name=":13" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> At her home on Nantucket, she entertained a number of prominent academics such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth.<ref name=":153" /><ref name=":9">Template:Cite book</ref> In 1849, Mitchell accepted a computing and field research position for the U.S. Coast Survey undertaken at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office.<ref name=":23">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":7" /> Her work consisted of tracking the movements of the planets — particularly Venus — and compiling tables of their positions to assist sailors in navigation.<ref name=":7" /> She joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850 and befriended many of its members, including the director of the Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry.

Mitchell traveled to Europe in 1857. While abroad, Mitchell toured the observatories of contemporary European astronomers Sir John and Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville.<ref name=":06"/> She also spoke with a number of natural philosophers including Alexander von Humboldt, William Whewell, and Adam Sedgewick before continuing her travels with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.<ref name=":06" /> Mitchell never married, but remained close to her immediate family throughout her life, even living in Lynn, Massachusetts with her sister Kate and her family in 1888.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Professorship at Vassar College (1865–1888)

File:Mitchell Maria telescope.jpg
Maria Mitchell (seated) inside the dome of the Vassar College Observatory, with her student Mary Watson Whitney (standing), circa 1877<ref name="FAMOUSAMERICANS">Tappan, Eva March, Heroes of Progress: Stories of Successful Americans, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921. Cf.pp.54–60</ref>

Though Mitchell did not have a college education, she was appointed professor of astronomy at Vassar College by its founder, Matthew Vassar, in 1865, and became the first female professor of astronomy.<ref name=":23" /><ref name="HOWE1900" /> Mitchell was the first person appointed to the faculty and was also named director of the Vassar College Observatory, a position she held for more than two decades.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="FAMOUSAMERICANS" /> Mitchell also edited the astronomical column of Scientific American during her professorship.<ref name=":06" /> Thanks in part to Mitchell's guidance, Vassar College enrolled more students in mathematics and astronomy than Harvard University from 1865 to 1888.<ref name=":14" /> In 1869, Mitchell became one of the first women elected to the American Philosophical Society, alongside Mary Somerville and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz. She received honorary doctorates from Hanover College,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Columbia University,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Rutgers Female College.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Mitchell employed many unconventional teaching methods in her classes. She reported neither grades nor absences, advocated for small classes and individualized attention, and incorporated technology and mathematics into her lessons.<ref name="HOWE1900" /> Though her students' career options were limited by their gender, she emphasized the importance of their study of astronomy. "I cannot expect to make astronomers," she said to her students, "but I do expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy modes of thinking. When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests."<ref name="AAAS">Template:Cite web</ref>

Mitchell's research interests were varied. She photographed planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, as well as their moons, and studied nebulae, double stars, and solar eclipses.<ref name="aps">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="HOWE1900" /> Mitchell also developed theories around her observations, such as the revolution of one star around another in double star formations and the influence of distance and chemical composition in star color variation.<ref name="aps" />

File:Maria Mitchell in the Vassar College Observatory, Vassar College, June 1878.jpg
Maria Mitchell inside the Vassar College Observatory, 1878

Mitchell often involved her students with her astronomical observations in both the field and the Vassar College Observatory.<ref name="aps" /> Though she began recording sunspots by eye in 1868, she and her students began photographing them daily in 1873.<ref name="aps" /> These were the first regular photographs of the Sun, and they allowed her to explore the hypothesis that sunspots were cavities rather than clouds on the surface of the Sun. For the total solar eclipse of July 29, 1878 Mitchell and five assistants traveled with a 4-inch telescope to Denver for observations.<ref name=":13" /> Her efforts contributed to the success of Vassar's science and astronomy graduates, as twenty-five of her students would go on to be featured in Who's Who in America.<ref name="HOWE1900" />

After teaching at Vassar for some time, Mitchell discovered that she was being paid less than many younger male professors. Mitchell and Alida Avery, the only other woman on the faculty at that time, demanded a salary increase, which they received.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref><ref name="Beaton">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She taught at the college until her retirement in 1888, one year before her death.

Social activism

In 1841, Mitchell attended the anti-slavery convention in Nantucket where Frederick Douglass made his first speech, and she also became involved in the anti-slavery movement by boycotting clothes made of Southern cotton.<ref name=":04" /> She later became involved in a number of social issues as a professor, particularly those pertaining to women's suffrage and education.<ref name=":6" /> She also befriended various suffragists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. After returning from a trip to Europe in 1873, Mitchell joined the national women's movement and helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), a group dedicated to educational reform and the promotion of women in higher education.<ref name=":06" /> Mitchell addressed the Association's First Women's Congress in a speech titled The Higher Education of Women in which she described the work of English women working for access to higher education at Girton College, Cambridge.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":06" />

Mitchell advocated for women working part-time while studying to make them more independent, as well as to increase their skills.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She also called attention to the place for women in science and mathematics and encouraged others to support women's colleges and women's campaigns to serve on local school boards.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":06" /> Mitchell served as the second president of the AAW in 1875 and 1876 before stepping down to head a special Committee on Science to analyze and promote women's progress in the field.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":06" /> She held this position until her death in 1889.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":06" />

Death and legacy

File:Maria Mitchell's telescope2.jpg
Maria Mitchell's telescope, on display in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History

Mitchell died of brain disease on June 28, 1889, in Lynn, Massachusetts at the age of 70. She was buried in Lot 411, in Prospect Hill Cemetery, Nantucket.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Maria Mitchell Association was established to promote the sciences on Nantucket and preserve the legacy of Mitchell's work.<ref name=":06"/> The Association operates a Natural History museum, an Aquarium, a Science Library and Research Center, Maria Mitchell's Home Museum, and an Observatory named in her honor, the Maria Mitchell Observatory.<ref name="Hoffleit">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1989, Mitchell was named a National Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.<ref name=":0" /> She was the namesake of a World War II Liberty ship, the SS Maria Mitchell, and New York's Metro North commuter railroad (with its Hudson Line endpoint in Poughkeepsie near Vassar College) has a train named the Maria Mitchell Comet. A crater on the Moon was also named in her honor.<ref name=":06"/> On August 1, 2013, the search engine Google honored Maria Mitchell with a Google Doodle showing her in cartoon form on top of a roof gazing through a telescope in search of comets.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Her unique place at the intersection of American science and culture has been captured in a number of recent publications.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Publications

During her life, Mitchell published seven items in the Royal Society Catalog and three articles detailing her observations in Silliman's Journal.<ref name=":06" /> Mitchell also authored three articles for Hours at Home, Century, and The Atlantic.<ref name=":06" />

See also

References

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Online sources

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Printed sources

  • Kendall, Phebe Mitchell. Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1896. (out of print; compiled by her sister)
  • M. W. Whitney, In Memoriam, (Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 1889)
  • M. K. Babbitt, Maria Mitchell as her students Knew her, (Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 1912)
  • Albers, Henry editor "Maria Mitchell, A Life in Journals and Letters" College Avenue Press, Clinton Corners, NY, 2001. (Henry Albers was the Fifth Maria Mitchell Professor of Astronomy at Vassar College.)
  • Torjesen, Elizabeth Fraser, Comet Over Nantucket: Maria Mitchell and Her Island: The Story of America's First Woman Astronomer, (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1984)
  • Renée Bergland, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics, Beacon Press, Boston, 2008.
  • Wright, Helen, Sweeper in the Skies: The Life of Maria Mitchell, College Avenue Press, Clinton Corners, NY, 1997. Template:ISBN. (Commemorative Edition of 1949 edition. Wright was born in Washington, DC and served as assistant in Astronomy Dept. at Vassar and later US Naval Observatory and Mt. Wilson Observatory.Wrote bios of Geo. Hale and Palomar Observatory & w. Harold Shapley co-ed of Treasury of Science)

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