Maria Mitchell: The Soul of an Astronomer

It is easy to lose track of how very many children's books Margaret Gormley (b. 1942 in California) has written: on Marie Curie, Julius Caesar, President George Bush, Senior and on and on. A few years back Ms Gormley wrote a biography of a woman born in 1818, one of the dominant Quakers of Nantucket, Mass., when that island was still the whaling capital of the world. That woman became noted for the following striking things: (1) Before she was 30, Maria discovered Comet 1847 VI and was handsomely rewarded by the King of Denmark; (2) She was America's first professional woman astronomer; (3) She was ... (a) the first professor of astronomy and mathematics at newly founded Vassar's Women College; (4)... (b) first woman member of " the American Academy of Arts, of the American Association for The Advancement of Science, and of the American Philosophical Society (founded by her distant relative Benjamin Franklin)"; (5) "A crater on the moon was named after her"; (6) In 1994 "she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York." *** This important woman, who lived 1818 -1889, is the subject of MARIA MITCHELL: THE SOUL OF AN ASTRONOMER. Like her parents, she pronounced her name mar-EYE-ah. And biographer Gormley does a better than average job of bringing Professor Mitchell to life. *** Astronomy she learned working as a precocious girl by the side of her father calibrating nautical clocks to empower masters of Nantucket whaling vessels to calculate longitude. She read voraciously, absorbing the practical works of early astronomers like Tycho Brahe and theoreticians like Galileo and Newton. She was not herself a theoretician, but she taught and critiqued astronomical and other theories (e.g., Darwinism) for her classes of bright young women at Vassar College for Women. *** The book's subtitle is THE SOUL OF AN ASTRONOMER. Author Beatrice Gormley rounds out Maria Mitchell through consideration of her religious evolution (from Quaker to sort-of Unitarian), her belief in women's intellectual equality with men, her distinguished and bold leadership in the early women's movement, her writings on slavery and on women's education. *** For adults MARIA MITCHELL: THE SOUL OF AN ASTRONOMER is a simple but solid introduction to the life and times of an important American woman. Author Gormley clearly credits her key sources, provides a good short follow-on bibliography and topical index. This is a solid peace of exact, albeit elementary and popular scholarship. *** One edition of MARIA MITCHELL describes the books as for 9-12 year olds. The author does not "write down," but at times is so compressed that she may have assumed that young readers know more of an issue and its key figures -- say, the women's movement -- than they do. Thus four of Gormley's 16 pages of well selected black and white photos and paintings include two pages showing women's rights pioneers and/or achievers Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe -- but not a whole lot more. *** My wife bought this book as a gift for a woman friend of ours in Germany, an intellectual who has published on Continental European women astronomers. When we recently visited Maria Mitchell sites on Nantucket Island, we decided that Ingrid would like this biography and would easily pick and choose among the items in the bibliography. -OOO-