Mary Somerville

If you want to know more of her, read Miss Thackeray's sketch.

Mary Somerville, 1780 to 1872, has always interested me greatly.

I want no more delightful reading than her personal recollections edited by her daughter.

A woman of indomitable energy and perseverance, by which in her ardent thirst for knowledge she overcame obstacles apparently insurmountable at a time when well-nigh totally debarred from education.

[laughs]

Until 1834, uh, when William Whewell, he reviewed the bestselling book, On The Connection of the Physical Sciences, by Mary Somerville, who was born in 1780, Scottish mathematician, astronomer, and polymath.

Whoa.

And he simply could not use the term men of science to review the book, so William Whewell coined the word scientist.

There was a clear, vital atmosphere in the dawn of the last century before reaction set in, before romance dwindled to sickly sentiment, to the resigned, dead level of the Holy Alliance on the Continent and Victorianism in England.

France produced a writer of the caliber of Madame de Stael; England, a Mary Somerville, a Jane Austen; and Germany, although the stronghold of the domestic ideal, also had her brilliant intellectual women, who, outside their own country, have perhaps not become as widely known as they deserve.

The women of the salons were not royal, aristocratic, or even artistic personages.

Simple Bürgerliche, or middle class, they emerged brilliantly from its levels, absorbed current ideas, enjoyed friendships with men of note, achieved European celebrity.