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 Henry Peter, Baron Brougham
Brougham had a number of friends among women writers. He was at primary school in Edinburgh with Susan Ferrier (who, however, declined to acknowledge him later, probably for political reasons). His political work brought him...
Friends, Associates Maria Grey
The Shirreffs were a sociable family whose friends and acquaintances were varied. The scientist Mary Somerville , geologist Sir Charles Lyell , and Sir William Grove , inventor of the Grove battery, were numbered among...
Friends, Associates Eliza Fletcher
Joanna Baillie (a well qualified judge) thought few people have so many friends as EF , and that they all warmly esteemed as well as loving her.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
2: 699
At first meeting, Fletcher did not...
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...
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 ...
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 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
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 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...
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 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...
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 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

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