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niyad

(112,444 posts)
Thu Aug 1, 2013, 03:04 AM Aug 2013

has everyone seen the google doodle for today--maria mitchell, 1st female astronomer in US

Maria Mitchell Discovers a Comet

Maria Mitchell, the first female professional astronomer in the United States, became instantly famous in October 1847, when she was the first to discover and chart the orbit of a new comet, which became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet."

. . . .

On the evening of October 1, 1847, Mitchell slipped out of a party and went to the roof to begin her observations. She noticed a small blurry streak, invisible to the naked eye, but clear in the telescope, and she guessed at once that it might be a comet. Excited, she ran to tell her father. He wanted to announce the discovery right away, but she was more cautious. She recorded the object's position, and continued to observe it to be sure it was a comet. On October 3, Mitchell's father sent off a letter to Cambridge announcing the discovery.
It turned out others had seen the comet at about the same time. Father de Vico at Rome observed the same comet on October 3, and several other people observed the same object shortly after that. However, Mitchell's priority was recognized, and she received the medal from the King of Denmark.

. . . .


In 1865 Mitchell became a faculty member at Vassar College, making her the first female astronomy professor in the United States. She was also appointed director of Vassar College Observatory.
. . . .

In addition to her scientific work, Mitchell was also active in opposing slavery and in advocating for women's rights. She believed that women's minds were too often wasted when they were forced to spend their time sewing rather than pursuing intellectual activities.
Maria Mitchell died on June 28, 1889. Although she is relatively unknown today, perhaps because her scientific accomplishments may not seem as impressive to us as they did to her contemporaries, she was well-known and respected in her day. As the first American woman astronomer and an advocate for women, she paved the way for others. The Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket is named after her, as is the Mitchell crater on the moon.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200610/history.cfm


Maria Mitchell
Born August 1, 1818
Nantucket, Massachusetts
Died June 28, 1889 (aged 70)
Lynn, Massachusetts
Nationality United States
Fields Astronomy
Known for Discovery of C/1847 T1
First female U.S. professional astronomer

Maria Mitchell (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) (pron: ma-RY-ah) was an American astronomer, who in 1847, by using a telescope, discovered a comet which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet". She won a gold medal prize for her discovery which was presented to her by King Frederick VII of Denmark. The medal said “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars”. Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.[1][2]
. . . .



Using a telescope, she discovered "Miss Mitchell's Comet&quot Comet 1847 VI, modern designation is C/1847 T1) on October 1 of 1847. Some years previously, King Frederick VI of Denmark had established gold medal prizes to each discoverer of a "telescopic comet" (too faint to be seen with the naked eye). The prize was to be awarded to the "first discoverer" of each such comet (note that comets are often independently discovered by more than one person). She duly won one of these prizes, and this gave her worldwide fame, since the only previous woman to discover a comet had been Caroline Herschel.

. . .

She became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850. She later worked at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, calculating tables of positions of Venus, and traveled in Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.
She became professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865, the first person (male or female) appointed to the faculty.[9] She was also named as Director of the Vassar College Observatory.[2] After teaching there for some time, she learned that despite her reputation and experience, her salary was less than that of many younger male professors. She insisted on a salary increase, and got it.[10]
Efforts

In 1842, she left the Quaker faith and followed Unitarian principles. In protest against slavery, she stopped wearing clothes made of cotton. She was friends with various suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. She was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as one of the first women elected to the American Philosophical Society (1869, at this identical meeting Mary Fairfax Somerville and Elizabeth Cabot Carey Agassiz were also elected).[11]

She died on June 28, 1889, at the age of 70, Lynn, Massachusetts. She was buried in Lot 411, Prospect Hill Cemetery, Nantucket.[12][13] The Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket is named in her honor. The Observatory is part of the Maria Mitchell Association in Nantucket, which aims to preserve the sciences on the island. It operates a Natural History Museum, Maria Mitchell's Home Museum, and the Science Library as well as the Observatory. She was also posthumously inducted into the U.S. National Women's Hall of Fame. She was the namesake of a World War II Liberty ship, the SS Maria Mitchell. The crater Mitchell on the Moon is named after her. In 1902, the Maria Mitchell Association was founded in her memory.[14] She is also known for her famous quote, "We have a hunger of the mind. We ask for all of the knowledge around us and the more we get, the more we desire."[15]
In 1905, Mitchell was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, New York.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mitchell

http://www.mariamitchell.org/

Maria Mitchell
. . .

Matthew Vassar, who had established Vassar Female College in 1861 as "the first U.S. college exclusively for women-based on the principle that women should receive the same education, with the same standards, as that offered in men's colleges," insisted that women, in a women's college, should be educated by women instructors. After several years delay due to opposition to women in the faculty within Vassar's board of trustees, Mitchell was appointed Professor of Astronomy. She taught there from 1865 to 1888.

Mitchell was an advocate in the Woman's Rights movement. The notable women of that movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony, were her friends and compatriots in the struggle for equality in professions and reforms in education and health issues for women. Mitchell encouraged her students to think of themselves as professional women. She asked, "How many pulpits are open to women?" And, "Do you know of any case in which a boys' college has offered a Professorship to a woman? Until you do, it is absurd to say that the highest learning is within the reach of American women."

"For women, there are undoubtedly great difficulties in the path, but so much the more to overcome," Mitchell told her students. "First, no woman should say, 'I am but a woman.' But a woman! What more can you ask to be? Born a woman, born with the average brain of humanity, born with more than the average heart, if you are mortal what higher destiny could you have? No matter where you are nor what you are, you are a power. Your influence is incalculable."
. . . .

Mitchell was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1848; the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1850; and the American Philosophical Society, 1869. She was a founder and an early president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873. She was awarded medals by Denmark, 1848, and San Marino, 1859. In 1887 Columbia College (now University) bestowed upon her the honorary degree LL.D., Dr. of Science and Philosophy.
. . . .


http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/mariamitchell.html



Maria Mitchell

. . . .
Mitchell published the findings of her students along with her own, somtimes in Silliman's Journal, the pioneering American scientific journal established at Yale in 1818 by Benjamin Silliman, and on other occasions in the Nantucket or Poughkeepsie papers. She constructed an apparatus for making photographs of the sun and preserved the plate of the photographs in a closet in the observatory--where they were rediscovered during a housecleaning in 1997, in place, and labelled in her own handwriting. Her students used the Morse telegraphy instrument invented and given to them by Samuel F. B. Morse, a neighbor of the college and one of its original trustees.

In 1869 Mitchell travelled with seven of her students to Burlington, Iowa, to see a total eclipse of the sun. As was later observed in The Great Experiment, A Chronicle of Vassar History, "the students' observations were printed in the official report of Professor J.H.C. Coffin, Superintendent of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, who directed the various observers of the eclipse." Under Mitchell's tutelage, these students, after just two or three years of scientific study at Vassar,were accurately recording their observations in a joint experiment that would reach a national scientific audience. At a time when men's colleges seldom engaged science students with direct field experience of this kind, her students were entering the new era of learning for women envisioned by the founder; Subsequently, on July 28, 1878, Mitchell and five of her students were the official observers of an eclipse near the Indian territory in Denver, Colorado.

. . .



In 1906 three of Mitchell's students were named in James M. Cattell's first lisiting of American Men of Science: Antonia Maury '87; Professor Mary Whitney, '68, MA '72; Dr. Christine Ladd Franklin, '69—the only woman ever to get an honorary degree from Vassar and the first to earn a PhD from Johns Hopkins. Mitchell became very much involved in early women's suffrage organizations, and when elected the second president of the American Association of Women (AAW) in 1875, she held meetings in the Vassar dome attended by well known suffragists.

Mitchell's announcement of her intention to retire at the end of the academic year in 1888 led to an offer from the college of continued college residence and use of the Observatory, and encouragement from colleagues and former students to remain. "You will consent, you must consent to having your home here, and letting the work go," a colleague wrote. "It is not astronomy that is wanted and needed, it is Maria Mitchell….The richest part of my life here is connected with you….I cannot picture Vassar without you. There's nothing to point to!" However, after 28 years at Vassar and at the end of her career, she returned to Lynn, Massachusetts and lived for only one more year, dying among her family on June 28, 1889. A few weeks earlier a former student had written to her, saying, "In all the great wonder of life, you have given me more of what I have wanted than any other creature ever gave me. I hoped I should amount to something for your sake."
In Matthew Vassar's Communications to the Board of Trustees before his own death he said of Mitchell: "Let the foremost woman of our land be among the most advanced and honored pilots and guardians of coming woman, and I cheerfully leave my name to be associated with the result." And so it was, and still is.

http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/faculty/original-faculty/maria-mitchell/

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has everyone seen the google doodle for today--maria mitchell, 1st female astronomer in US (Original Post) niyad Aug 2013 OP
K&R n/t OneGrassRoot Aug 2013 #1
K&R! nt sheshe2 Aug 2013 #2
. . . niyad Aug 2013 #3
Yes--it's a gorgeous one! nt msanthrope Aug 2013 #4
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