Mary Somerville
Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville ( born December 26, 1780 in Jedburgh, † November 28, 1872 in Naples) was a Scottish astronomer and mathematician who shared their knowledge autodidactic appropriated and received as a science author great fame.
Origin and environment
Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville came in her mother's, the parish house in Jedburgh, Scotland, the sister's house, to the world. She was the daughter of Admiral Sir William George Fairfax. Her uncle, the brother of the mother's sister, was Thomas Somerville (1741-1830), author of an autobiography ( My Own Life and Times). His son, William Somerville, medical inspector of the Army (1771-1860), in 1812 Mary Somerville's second husband. From his first marriage (1804 ) with Samuel Greig - a distant cousin, Captain and Russian consul in London - they had two children. When he died in 1806, the legacy enabled her to pursue their scientific interests.
William Somerville, whom she married in 1812 and with whom she had four children, was a dedicated promoter of their scientific work. 1835 she received a pension of £ 300 from the government. With her family Mary Somerville moved to Italy in 1838, where she spent most of her life from now on. Her second husband survived Somerville by 12 years and died in Naples at the age of 92 years. She is buried there in the Cimitero degli Inglesi.
Professional career and publications
Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville grew up having a miserable training. After leaving school she algebra and Euclid took secretly, later Laplace's Mécanique Céleste and Newton's Principia, and became one of the most famous self-taught their time.
With their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, she won the recognition of the relevant scientists, even before they gained general celebrity. So you said Laplace, that she was the only woman who understood his work.
Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville published in 1831 as a commissioned work for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a translation of the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace under the title The Mechanism of the Heavens in understandable language and form what you earned instant celebrity. Their style is characterized by clarity and conciseness, and is traversed by great enthusiasm for the topics covered.
1835, she and Caroline Herschel was added as the first two women in the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Personal Recollections 1873, written by her daughter, Martha Somerville, provide a review of the literary and scientific society of their time, which is also of great interest as therein translucent portrait of the personality of the remembered subject.
After Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville were named: The Somerville College, Oxford, Somerville Iceland (54 ° 44'N 130 ° 17'W ) on the coast of British Columbia near the border with Alaska, as well as a moon crater.