124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, United States
Astronomer Maria Mitchell standing second from left, next to a telescope, is shown with her astronomy class outside the observatory, at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, circa 1870.
Gallery of Maria Mitchell
1877
124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, United States
Picture of Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, and her student Mary Whitney in the Vassar College Observatory, about 1877.
Gallery of Maria Mitchell
Portrait photo of Maria Mitchell at the desk.
Gallery of Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell and her father.
Gallery of Maria Mitchell
Portrait painting of Maria Mitchell.
Gallery of Maria Mitchell
Portrait photo of Maria Mitchell.
Achievements
1965
Maria Mitchell Hall of Fame for Great Americans Medal, 1965.
Membership
American Philosophical Society
Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected to the American Philosophical Society (which had been founded by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia).
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Maria Mitchell was a Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, United States
Astronomer Maria Mitchell standing second from left, next to a telescope, is shown with her astronomy class outside the observatory, at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, circa 1870.
Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer and educator. She discovered a new comet and became one of the best-known faculty members at Vassar College.
Background
Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, in Massachusetts on the island of Nantucket, the second daughter and third of 10 children of Lydia and William Mitchell. Her ancestors were members of the Society of Friends who had migrated from England to America. Encouraged by several factors, astronomer Mitchell pursued an unconventional life pattern for a 19th-century woman. Her Quaker background, a mother who had worked in two libraries in order to read all the books they contained, a father with a passion for astronomy and an unswerving belief that a girl's education should be comparable to those given to boys, and a geographical location that stimulated the study of natural phenomena all combined to encourage Mitchell to follow her passion for mathematics and astronomy. As a child, Mitchell was insatiably curious.
William Mitchell spent most of his evenings observing the heavens. As his children grew old enough, they became his assistants. Maria learned to operate a sextant at an early age. When she was eighteen, her father began making astronomical observations for the United States Coast Survey. Mitchell helped her father with his work and together they made thousands of observations of meridian altitudes of stars for the determination of time and latitude and of moon culminations and occultations for longitude.
Education
After attending local private elementary schools from the age of four, Maria Mitchell enrolled in a school run by her father. His was a remarkable institution where observation of nature predominated, a pedagogy that Mitchell would later put to good use during her illustrious career at Vassar College. Established in 1827, William Mitchell's method stressed fieldwork - the collecting of stones, shells, seaweed, and flowers. After William Mitchell gave up his school, Maria was sent to Cyrus Peirce's school for "young ladies." Peirce, who later became principal of the first Normal School in the United States, was intrigued by Maria's mathematical abilities and encouraged her in this area. Although she later insisted that she "was born of only ordinary capacity, but of extraordinary persistency," Peirce "saw in her the quality of self-discipline together with the rare insight which makes the difference between a creative life and the prosaic existence of a mere fact collector." At age sixteen the formal education of Maria Mitchell - later the recipient of two honorary Legum Doctor degrees and an honorary Doctor of Philosophy - ended. On her own, she labored over Bridge's Conic Sections, Hutton's Mathematics, and Bowditch's Practical Navigator. She studied the works of Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre in French, and she carefully considered Gauss' Theoria motus corporeum coelestium.
Career
In 1835 Maria Mitchell opened her own school. Her pupils were greeted with an unconventional approach to education. School might begin before dawn in order that the students could watch birds. The school day might extend late into the night so they could observe the planets and stars. In 1836 Mitchell was offered the post of librarian at the new Nantucket Athenaeum. This position allowed her time to continue her own studies.
On October 1, 1847, Mitchell observed a new comet. When it was established she was, indeed, the first discoverer, the comet was named for her, and she gained worldwide fame when the king of Denmark awarded her a gold medal. With this discovery, Mitchell gained more attention as a leading astronomer in both the United States and Europe. As a result of her discovery of the comet, in 1848 Mitchell became the first woman ever elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her name was proposed by Louis Agassiz, the well-known American naturalist, and geologist. She also became a member of the newly formed American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850 and formed a lifelong friendship with Joseph Henry, director of the Smithsonian Institution.
Mitchell became a computer for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, a post she held for 19 years. In this capacity, she made measurements that helped in the accurate determination of time, latitude, and longitude. Nantucket was often visited by famous people, many of whom, like the writer Herman Melville, "passed the evening with Mr. Mitchell, the astronomer, and his celebrated daughter, the discoverer of comets."
An opportunity to travel abroad occurred in 1857 when Mitchell was asked to chaperone the daughter of a wealthy Chicago banker on a trip through Europe. Equipped with letters of introduction, Mitchell seized the opportunity to visit observatories in England and on the Continent. One of the high points of her trip was a meeting with the seventy-seven-old physicist and astronomer, Mary Somerville.
Mitchell's career turned from a focus on research to teaching when she accepted an offer from Matthew Vassar to become a professor of astronomy and director of the observatory at the newly founded Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. With her health failing, Mitchell retired from Vassar College on Christmas Day, 1888. She returned to Lynn, Massachusetts, where she died in 1889.
In 1843, Maria Mitchell underwent a spiritual crisis and asked to be "disowned" by the Quakers. They complied, and she then attended, but never joined, the Unitarian Church.
Politics
Maria Mitchell had neither deep interest nor, any other than on social issues, involvement in politics.
Views
Mitchell became an ardent and impassioned proponent of higher education for women. She considered ridiculous the prevalent view that women were innately unsuited to mathematics and other sciences. Once again her teaching methods were unorthodox. Instead of lectures, of which she heartily disapproved, she stressed small classes and individual attention. Keenly aware of what defined scientific excellence, Mitchell made a deliberate choice to commit herself to teaching rather than to theoretical astronomy. At a time when higher education for women was in its infancy, she decided that her talents would be of most use in this area. Because she was a devoted teacher, her research time was sharply limited.
Mitchell, reared on the model of Nantucket women and forced to be independent by her husband's, son's, and father's long absences at sea, taught her students to "question everything else." She insisted on their learning not by rote but from observation. Her commitment to the higher education of women only increased over time. In 1873 she was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Women and for two years served as its president; until her death, she was chair of its science committee. Year after year, at scientific meetings and the Association for the Advancement of Women congresses and in lectures, she pleaded for recognition of women's scientific abilities.
Mitchell did not feel she was a theoretician, but rather a teacher and observer. She saw a conflict in trying to do both, remarking that "the scientist should be free to pursue his investigations. He cannot be a scientist and a schoolmaster." She believed strongly in the value of imagination in science, saying, "It is not all mathematics, nor all logic but is somewhat beauty and poetry."
Quotations:
"It is not all mathematics, nor all logic but is somewhat beauty and poetry."
"I could not but admire Mrs. Somerville as a woman. The ascent of the steep and rugged path of science had not unfitted her for the drawing-room circle; the hours of devotion to close study have not been incompatible with the duties of wife and mother; the mind that has turned to rigid demonstration has not thereby lost its faith in those truths which figures will not prove."
Membership
Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected to the American Philosophical Society (which had been founded by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia). In 1873, she was made a vice-president of the American Social Science Association. She was a Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
American Philosophical Society
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United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
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United States
American Social Science Association
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United States
Personality
Mithcell's friends who were asked to select for comment the one most striking trait of her character named her genuineness. There was no false note in Maria Mitchell's thinking or utterance. Doubt she might and she might linger in doubt, but false she could not be. This genuineness explains also a marked feature of her religious experience. She would not use the language of faith often because it did not seem to her that she had clearly grasped the truths which came through faith. It would be a grave error to infer from this that she was not a religious woman in a true sense. She was always a seeker of truth.
Connections
Mitchell was single but remained close to her immediate family throughout her life, even living in Lynn, Massachusetts with her sister Kate and her family in 1888.