Mary Edwards (astronomer)

Mary Edwards (* around 1750, † September 1815 ) was an English astronomer.

Edwards was the only woman among other calculators (1765 to 1811 about 35) who were paid for the computation of the Nautical Almanac by the Bureau of Longitudes under the supervision of the Royal Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne . At first she made the calculations under the name of her husband, the clergyman John Edwards in Shropshire (Nautical Almanac from 1773 to 1784). When he died, she successfully applied to Maskelyne to continue this in order to support herself and her daughters. She was very reliable and later did about half of all the arithmetic for the almanac (the rest was split between three or four others) and she also taught other computers to participate in the project. When Maskelyn died in 1811, her share was reduced in the meantime, but she successfully submitted an application for higher pay, but did not get back the old position of Nautical Almanac Comparer , which she held for a few years under Maskelyne. After her death in 1815, her daughter Eliza continued doing arithmetic. This ended in 1832, when work on the almanac was centralized and homeworkers ceased to exist that year.

It is mentioned by Jérôme Lalande in his Astronomie des dames (first 1785) as an example for female astronomers.

literature

• Mary Croarken: Mary Edwards: Computing for a Living in 18th-Century England, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 25, No. 4, 2003, pp. 9-15, abstract

Web links

• Longitude Ladies, 2011