Maria Mitchell

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Maria Mitchell, painting by Herminia Borchard Dassel

Maria Mitchell (born August 1, 1818 in Nantucket , Massachusetts , † June 28, 1889 in Lynn , Massachusetts) was an American astronomer and campaigner for women's rights .

Life

Maria Mitchell's parents were members of the Quaker religion, which considered education to be desirable for all. Her father, William Mitchell, was an amateur astronomer and teacher. He gave his scientifically talented daughter mathematics and astronomy lessons and encouraged her to do their own research. Thus she assumed a special role in the early 19th century, when so-called “ higher daughters ” were only taught housekeeping and the fine arts. In addition, in Nantucket, a center of the whaling industry at the time, astronomical instruments such as sextants were in almost every household. It was comparatively easy for Maria Mitchell to become interested in astronomy as a woman. As a fourteen-year-old she was already independently calibrating the watches of the seamen who entrusted her with their instruments. She later worked as an assistant in the local school and founded her own school for girls in 1835 when she was seventeen.

In 1847 she discovered the Mitchell comet, later named after her, from her parents' observatory .

Just one year later, in 1848, she was the first woman to be admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, in 1850, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science . She ran the library at Nantucket, continued her education with the help of the books entrusted to her, worked with her father on astronomical questions and maintained extensive scientific correspondence with the major American universities. Maria Mitchell read the original in German and French and was convinced that access to astronomy is through mathematics. She has been invited to speak at many lectures and conferences and while traveling through Europe she met many well-known scientists of her time, including Alexander von Humboldt . In contrast to the most famous scientist of the 19th century, Mary Somerville , Maria Mitchell managed to gain entry to the Vatican observatory in 1858.

In 1865, at the age of 47, she was again the first woman to be appointed professor of astronomy at the prestigious Vassar College . In 1869 she was appointed to the American Philosophical Society - also the first woman . During her employment with the Nautical Almanac Office , she compiled the yearbook of the US Navy, in which navigators could look up the positions of the stars and planets. In line with its approach in astronomical research also published as a mathematician: You dealt with the Fermat's conjecture , and published a study on the Sophie Germain - primes .

In 1875, Marie Mitchell was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), which she founded in 1873 .

Mitchell was a professor at Vassar College until 1888 . She also headed the AAW Science Council until shortly before her death. Her successor as professor and director of the Vassar College Observatory was her former student and assistant Mary Watson Whitney .

Life's work

In addition to her astronomical discoveries, Maria Mitchell campaigned for more women in the natural sciences throughout her life. She criticized the mediocrity of the majority of her male colleagues and repeatedly stressed that science urgently needs the skills and knowledge of women:

"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but is somewhat beauty and poetry.

What we need most in science is imagination. It's not just about mathematics or logic, but also a little bit about beauty and poetry "

Mitchell was one of the most famous scientists (men and women) in the United States in the 19th century.

Mitchell was considered an excellent professor who stood up for her students and helped them to become really good scientists, even though they were "only" women. She attached great importance to practical experience and always liked to make fun of pure theorists who got all their knowledge from books. According to her, someone who had not observed certain processes himself or had empirically proven them could never really trust his knowledge. "Did you learn that from a book or did you observe it yourself?" Was her most famous question that made her go down in the annals of American science. She asked this question not only to her students, but also to her fellow astronomers, and at the time made herself more than unpopular with them.

Honors

She was awarded a medal by the King of Denmark for the discovery of Mitchell's Comet .

After her death, the Maria Mitchell Astronomical Society was founded in honor of Maria Mitchell . In 1905 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans .

In honor of her memory the 30 km large crater Mitchell was named after her in 1935 and the asteroid (1455) Mitchella discovered in Heidelberg in 1937 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Maria Mitchell  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Florian Freistetter: The pioneer: Maria Mitchell's love for astronomy and her commitment to equal rights for women , published on March 8, 2015, accessed on June 26, 2015
  2. ↑ Caterina Lobenstein: "Because you are only a woman" (6): She reached for the stars . In: The time . January 30, 2014, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed February 13, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Wolfgang-Hagen Hein (Ed.): Alexander von Humboldt. Life and work . Boehringer, Ingelheim 1985, ISBN 3-921037-55-7 , pp. 279 .
  4. ↑ Travels in Rome | Maria Mitchell Association. Retrieved February 13, 2019 (American English).
  5. ↑ Jeffrey Bennett et al .: Astronomy. The cosmic perspective (Ed. Harald Lesch ), 5th, updated edition 2010. Pearson Studium Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-8273-7360-1 , page 78
  6. ^ Carl C. Gaither, Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither (ed.): Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations , Springer Verlag, New York, ISBN 978-1-4614-1113-0 , p. 1032. Here online at books.google , accessed December 1, 2015.
  7. ↑ Wiebke Porombka: Flying necessary, not living , article in the taz of June 21, 2006, accessed on December 1, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Mitchell, Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronomer and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantucket , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1889
Place of death Lynn , Massachusetts