User:KellyAnnDrew/MariaMitchell

Early years (1818–1846)[edit]

Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, in

. Mitchell often assisted her father in his work with local seamen and in his observations of the night sky.

Mitchell's parents, like other Quakers, valued education and insisted on giving her the same access to education as boys received. She was fortunate that her father was a dedicated public school teacher who pursued an interest in mathematics and astronomy; he saw to it that Mitchell, who especially showed interest and talent, and all his children were indoctrinated with knowledge of astronomy. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months, sometimes years, to manage affairs at home while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women who called the island home.

After attending Elizabeth Gardner small school in her earliest childhood years, Mitchell attended the North Grammar school, where William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years following the founding of that school, when she was 11 years old, her father founded his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. At home, her father taught her astronomy using his personal telescope. At age 12 1/2 she aided her father in calculating the exact moment of a solar eclipse, in 1831.

Her father's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies until she was 16. Later, she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before she opened her own school in 1835. Mitchell developed experimental teaching methods, which she practiced in her future teaching positions. She made the decision to allow nonwhite children to attend her school, a controversial move as the local public school was still segregated at the time.

Mitchell began working as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum in 1836 and held this position for 20 years. The institution’s limited operating hours enabled her to assist her father with a series of astronomical observations and geographical calculations for the

and to continue her own education. Mitchell and her father worked in a small observatory constructed on the roof of the Pacific Bank building with a four-inch equatorial telescope provided by the survey. In addition to looking for nebulae and double stars, the pair produced latitudes and longitudes by calculating the altitudes of stars and the culminations and occultations of the moon, respectively.

In 1843, Mitchell left the Quaker faith and began to follow Unitarian principles, although she did not physically attend a Unitarian Church until more than twenty years later. Her departure from the Quakers did not cause a break with her family, with whom she remained close.^[1]  We know little about this period, because few of her personal documents remain from before 1846. The Mitchell family believes she witnessed personal papers of fellow Nantucketers blown through the street by the Great Fire of 1846, and because fear of another fire persisted, she burned her own documents to keep them private.

Discovery of "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (1846–1849)

At 10:50 pm on the night of October 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) using a Dollond refracting telescope with three inches of aperture and forty-six inch focal length. She had noticed the unknown object flying through the sky in an area where she previously had not noticed any other activity and believed it to be a comet. The comet later became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet”. Mitchell published a notice of her discovery in Silliman's Journal in January 1848 under her father's name. The following month, she submitted her calculation of the comet's orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer. Mitchell was celebrated at the Seneca Falls Convention for the discovery and calculation later that year. In 1848, Mitchell became the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[30]

On October 6, 1848, Mitchell was awarded a gold medal prize for her discovery by King Christian VIII of Denmark

.

Intermediate years (1849–1864)

Mitchell became a celebrity following her discovery and awards, with hundreds of newspaper articles written about her in the subsequent decade. At her home in Nantucket, she entertained a number of prominent academics of the time such as

, Joseph Henry.

Mitchell traveled to Europe in 1857. While abroad, Mitchell toured the observatories of contemporary European astronomers Sir John and Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. She also spoke with a number of natural philosophers including Alexander von Humboldt, William Whewell, and Adam Sedgewick before continuing her travels with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family. Mitchell never married, but remained close to her immediate family throughout her life, even living in Lynn, Massachusetts with her sister Kate and her family in 1888.

Professorship at Vassar College (1865–1888)

Though Mitchell herself did not have a college education, she was appointed professor of astronomy at Vassar College by its founder, Matthew Vassar, in 1865 and became the first female professor of astronomy^[5]. Mitchell was the first person appointed to the faculty and was also named director of the Vassar College Observatory, a position she held for more than two decades. Mitchell also edited the astronomical column of Scientific American during her professorship. Thanks in part to Mitchell's guidance, Vassar College enrolled more students in mathematics and astronomy than Harvard University from 1865 to 1888. In 1869, Mitchell joined Mary Somerville and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz in becoming some of the first women elected to the American Philosophical Society. Hanover College, Columbia University, and Rutgers Female College granted Mitchell honorary degrees.

Mitchell maintained many of her unconventional teaching methods in her classes: she reported neither grades nor absences; she advocated for small classes and individualized attention; and she incorporated technology and mathematics in her lessons. Though her students’ career options were limited, she never doubted the importance of their study of astronomy. “I cannot expect to make astronomers,” she said to her students, “but I do expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy modes of thinking. When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests”.

Mitchell’s own research interests were quite varied. She took pictures of planets, such as

.

After teaching at Vassar for some time, she learned that despite her reputation and experience, her salary was less than that of many younger male professors. Mitchell and Alida Avery, the only other woman on the faculty at that time, insisted on a salary increase, and got it in 1871^[6]. She taught at the college until her retirement in 1888, one year before her death.

Social issues

In 1841, she attended the anti-slavery convention in Nantucket where Fredrick Douglas made his first speech, and as part of the anti-slavery movement, she refused to wear clothing made out of Southern cotton.

. Mitchell served as the second president of the AAW in 1875 and 1876 before stepping down to form and head a special Committee on Science to promote and analyze women’s progress in the field. She held this position until her death in 1889.

Death and legacy

Mitchell died of brain disease on June 28, 1889 at the age of 70 in Lynn, Massachusetts. She was buried in Lot 411, in Prospect Hill Cemetery, Nantucket. An organization, the Maria Mitchell Association, was established in Nantucket to preserve the sciences on the island and Mitchell’s work. The Association operates a natural history museum, aquarium, Science Library, Maria Mitchell’s Home Museum, and an observatory named in her honor, the Maria Mitchell Observatory.

Mitchell was made a National Women's History Month Honoree for 1989 by the

showing her in cartoon form on top of a roof gazing through a telescope in search of comets.

Her unique place at the intersection of American science and culture has been vividly captured in a number of recent publications. In Maria Popova's recent book Figuring, published in 2019, Maria Mitchell serves as the backbone through which she explores how the personal lives of women scientists and artists interact with their professional passions. Her life is also brilliantly illustrated in a children's book written by Hayley Barrett and illustrated by Diana Sudkya called What Miss Mitchell Saw.

Publications

During her life, Mitchell published seven items in the Royal Society Catalog and three articles detailing her observations in

. Mitchell also authored three popular articles for Hours at Home, Century, and the Atlantic.