Mitchell Maria
Maria Mitchell was fortunate to be born on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, into an educated family of 10 children, to whom an equal education was provided. Her mother had worked in two libraries in order to have access to books; her father, a Quaker, opened a school in 1827 before taking a job in a bank. Mitchell was educated at various schools, including that of her father, until the age of 16, extending her education by herself by reading the books on mathematics of Bridge, Hutton, Legendre, Laplace, Gauss, etc. She also assisted her father, who conducted observations as an amateur astronomer, and checked the stopwatches of the whalers of Nantucket. At the age of 12, she determined with her father the time of an annular eclipse, and learned early on how to use a telescope. There were many amateur astronomers on the island because, as she reported later, they preferred the sky to the monotony of the landscape.
At age 17, Mitchell opened a school where she applied, like his father, unconventional methods. In 1836, she obtained a position with the island’s library, the Nantucket Atheneum, which allowed her to earn a living and to continue her education through books. She also continued her astronomical activities in the observatory that her father had established on the roof of his house. Thus she discovered a comet in 1847. Her father reported the discovery to William Bond, a professor at Harvard, who then asked the king of Denmark to bestow upon her one of the gold medals the king had promised to the discoverers of comets. The mail having been slow, the medal was awarded to Father Francesco de Vico, who had observed the same comet two days after the young woman. However, she received the decoration the following year, and the comet C/1847 T1 took the name of “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.”
Her discovery brought her notoriety and in 1848 she became the first female member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and then a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1850). In 1849, she was hired by the U.S. Nautical Almanac to calculate the positions of the planet Venus. In 1857, she chaperoned the daughter of a banker on a trip to Europe, and visited London, Paris and Rome. Upon her return, Mitchell was offered a telescope financed by American women to honor the first female astronomers of the country.
She confirmed that the sunspots are not clouds but vertical cavities. In 1865, she was appointed professor of astronomy at the Vassar College and director of its observatory, which had a 12-inch diameter telescope, one of the largest in the United States. Her research focused on various topics: the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn, astronomical photography etc.
The first woman elected to the American Philosophical Society, in 1869, she participated in 1873 in the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Women, over which she presided from 1874 to 1876. The same year, she attended the first meeting of the women of the Congress.
She discovered that her salary was lower than that of younger male teachers and fought for it to be increased . A feminist, she encouraged young women to study and work, and she advocated the abolition of slavery.
In 1902, the Maria Mitchell Astronomical Society was founded in her honor. A lunar crater is named after her, and the observatory of Nantucket bears her name.