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
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 .
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...
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...

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