Mary Somerville

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Standard Name: Somerville, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Fairfax
Married Name: Mary Greig
Married Name: Mary Somerville
Eminent Scottish mathematician and scientist MS was best known as the author of four popular expository texts on science: Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), Physical Geography (1848), and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869). She also published the results of three of her experiments, an article on Halley's comet, and an autobiography.
Image from head-and-shoulders chalk drawing of Mary Somerville by James Rannie Swinton, 1848. She looks down, away from the viewer, wearing a white scarf and white ruffled cap, her dark smooth hair parted in the middle and pulled back. This was engraved as frontispiece to her "Physical Geography", vol. i, 1848.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Joanna Baillie
On the other hand she was fully appreciative of Maria Edgeworth , whom she first met on 16 May 1813. She sounded a little patronising about Edgeworth after this first meeting, but felt an immediate...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
She devotes a chapter to each woman of sterling qualities . . . . in the hope that studious habits, intellectual pursuits, domestic industry, and sound religious principles, may be promoted and conformed by such...
Education Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Her aunt Julia was a great influence on BLSB , who through her met Harriet Martineau , Mary Somerville , and Amelia Opie .
Friends, Associates Jessie Boucherett
Partly through her membership of the Kensington Society (a social and political discussion group of about fifty women inaugurated in 1865), JB broadened her acquaintance with significant members of the feminist movement, including Frances Power Cobbe
politics Jessie Boucherett
An active suffragist, JB helped (with a committee whose members included Harriet Martineau , Frances Power Cobbe and Mary Somerville ) to organize the suffrage petition presented to Parliament on 7 June.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Friends, Associates Augusta Ada Byron
AAB became friendly with and sought mathematical guidance from Mary Somerville .
Patterson, Elizabeth Chambers. Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815-1840. Martinus Nijhoff.
148-9
Instructor Augusta Ada Byron
Lady Byron employed a number of governesses to educate the young AAB at their various country homes. From the age of five Ada received full-time instruction in arithmetic, grammar, spelling, reading, music, geography, drawing, and...
Residence Jane Welsh Carlyle
Mary Somerville and her family and Leigh Hunt and his were neighbours of the Carlyles in Chelsea.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Jane Welsh Carlyle: A New Selection of Her Letters. Editor Bliss, Trudy, Victor Gollancz.
48
Friends, Associates Georgiana Chatterton
In Italy GC met one of her closest friends, Helen Selina Blackwood , Caroline Norton 's elder sister.
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett.
26
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Back in England, she met and liked Walter Savage Landor .
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett.
37
She moved and entertained...
Reception Agnes Mary Clerke
She was admitted at the same time as Lady Huggins , who wrote a tribute to her following her death.
Commire, Anne, and Deborah Klezmer, editors. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Yorkin Publications.
832
The three women who had been previously admitted into the Society were Caroline Herschel
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
During her months in Florence, FPC visited the Brownings, Thomas Adolphus Trollope , and Walter Savage Landor . While there she also became a close friend of Mary Somerville .
Cobbe, Frances Power. Life of Frances Power Cobbe. Houghton, Mifflin.
2: 346-9, 358
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
During her 1860 sojourn in Italy she declined an invitation to meet George Eliot because the latter was living with a married man. Her friendship with distinguished scientist Mary Somerville blossomed during this trip, and...
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Power Cobbe
Lloyd was the daughter of the squire of Rhagatt in Merionethshire, Wales; a maiden aunt in the family had been a friend of the Ladies of Llangollen (Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby )...
Friends, Associates Maria Edgeworth
Among her many social engagements, she attended a house-party at the home of Whig MP and agriculturalist Sir John Sebright , whose guests included Dr Wollaston and the science-writers Jane Marcet and Mary Somerville ...
Textual Features Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Her authors run from Jane Austen and some contemporaries to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Harriet Martineau . Elizabeth Fry , Mary Carpenter , and Florence Nightingale represent philanthropy, Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville science, and...

Timeline

11 October 1797: A British victory over the Dutch in the naval...

National or international item

11 October 1797

A British victory over the Dutch in the naval battle of Camperdown restored the reputation of the navy after the mutiny at Spithead earlier that year.

1835: Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were...

National or international item

1835

Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were awarded honorary memberships by the Royal Astronomical Society .

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .

1862: Educator Anne Sheepshanks was awarded honorary...

National or international item

1862

Educator Anne Sheepshanks was awarded honorary membership in the Royal Society .

April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...

Writing climate item

April 1879

James Murray —editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.

October 1879: Somerville College, one of the two first...

Building item

October 1879

Somerville College , one of the two first residential women's colleges at Oxford University, opened its doors to students.

1886: The working-class, popular, evangelical writer...

Women writers item

1886

The working-class, popular, evangelical writer Marianne Farningham (born Mary Ann Hearne or Hearn ) published as Eva Hope a book called Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era which reveals unexpected feminist sympathies.

1886: Eva Hope's Queens of Literature of the Victorian...

Women writers item

1886

Eva Hope 's Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era singled out Mary Somerville , Harriet Martineau , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot , and Felicia Hemans .

By 18 August 1888: Lucy Walford published Four Biographies from...

Women writers item

By 18 August 1888

Lucy Walford published Four Biographies from Blackwood's.

Texts

Somerville, Mary. A Preliminary Dissertation to the Mechanism of the Heavens by Mary Somerville. W. Clowes, 1832.
Somerville, Mary. “Art. VII. -1. Ueber den Halleyschen Cometen. Von Littrow. Wien, 1835. 2. Ueber den Halleyschen Cometen. Von Professor von Encke. Berliner Jarbuch, 1835”. Quarterly Review, Vol.
55
, pp. 195-33.
Somerville, Mary et al. “Experiments on the Transmission of Chemical Rays of the Solar Spectrum across Different Areas. Excerpt from a letter of Mrs Somerville’s to Mr. Arago”. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences, Vol.
3
, pp. 473-6.
Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace,. Mechanism of the Heavens. Translator Somerville, Mary, John Murray, 1831.
Somerville, Mary. On Molecular and Microscopic Science. John Murray, 1869.
Somerville, Mary. “On the Action of the Rays of the Spectrum on Vegetable Juices. ”. Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal Society of London from 1843 to 1850, Vol.
5
, p. 569.
Somerville, Mary. On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Arno Press, 1975.
Somerville, Mary. “On the Magnetizing Power of the more Refrangible Solar Rays”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol.
116
, pp. I: 132 - 9.
Somerville, Mary. Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville. Editor Somerville, Martha, John Murray, 1873.
Somerville, Mary. Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville. Editor Somerville, Martha, Roberts Brothers, 1874.
Somerville, Mary. Physical Geography. John Murray, 1848.
Somerville, Mary. Physical Geography. Lea and Blanchard, 1850.