Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics

by Renée Bergland

New England blossomed in the nineteenth century, producing a crop of distinctively American writers along with distinguished philosophers and jurists, abolitionists and scholars. A few of the female stars of this era-Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, and Susan B. Anthony, for instance-are still appreciated, but there are a number of intellectual women whose crucial roles in the philosophical, social, and scientific debates that roiled the era have not been fully examined.

Among them is the astronomer Maria Mitchell. She was raised in isolated but cosmopolitan Nantucket, a place brimming with enthusiasm for intellectual culture and hosting the luminaries of the day, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Sojourner Truth. Like many island girls, she was encouraged to study the stars. Given the relative dearth of women scientists today, most of us assume that science has always been a masculine domain. But as Renée Bergland reminds us, science and humanities were not seen as separate spheres in the nineteenth century; indeed, before the Civil War, women flourished in science and mathematics, disciplines that were considered less politically threatening and less profitable than the humanities. Mitchell apprenticed with her father, an amateur astronomer; taught herself the higher math of the day; and for years regularly "swept" the clear Nantucket night sky with the telescope in her rooftop observatory.

In 1847, thanks to these diligent sweeps, Mitchell discovered a comet and was catapulted to international fame. Within a few years she was one of America's first professional astronomers; as "computer of Venus"-a sort of human calculator-for the U.S. Navy's Nautical Almanac, she calculated the planet's changing position. After an intellectual tour of Europe that included a winter in Rome with Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mitchell was invited to join the founding faculty at Vassar College, where she spent her later years mentoring the next generation of women astronomers. Tragically, opportunities for her students dried up over the next few decades as the increasingly male scientific establishment began to close ranks.

Mitchell protested this cultural shift in vain. "The woman who has peculiar gifts has a definite line marked out for her," she wrote, "and the call from God to do his work in the field of scientific investigation may be as imperative as that which calls the missionary into the moral field or the mother into the family . . . The question whether women have the capacity for original investigation in science is simply idle until equal opportunity is given them." In this compulsively readable biography, Renée Bergland chronicles the ideological, academic, and economic changes that led to the original sexing of science-now so familiar that most of us have never known it any other way.

Genres: Science, History, Nonfiction, Biography, History Of Science, Biography Memoir, Astronomy

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jake Kritzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at Mitchell’s book shop on Nantucket some 13 years ago according to the receipt tucked in the back cover. In that time, I’ve plowed through a number of other books, but always skipped over this one. Finally picked it up, and am very glad I did!

I think I feared that this would be a dry, scholarly account. It is scholarly, but far from dry. Bergland draws upon art, history, and sociology to establish the context for Mitchell’s life, but does so selectively and weaves the information together into a biography that is very readable, thought-provoking, and even inspiring.

This book challenged much of what I thought I knew about history, science, and feminism. It’s subject matter is brought to life, often with joy and optimism.

On a personal note, I finally got around to reading this while trying to raise two young girls and build an ocean observatory (with parallels to building astronomical observatories). None of that was the case when in bought the book in 2009, so maybe something was telling me to wait until I could get more out of the book. I’m glad I did, for the timing was ideal.

[Kadri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is in part a biography of Maria Mitchell, the first woman astronomer in America to discover a comet, and in part a look into women's opportunities in science in the 19th century.
I was surprised to learn about a variety of topics in this book that came up in connection with Maria's life - first was the difference between the meanings of "woman", "female" and "lady" in 19th century. The second was how higher education for women was seen as something that would by nature turn the women masculine and even infertile. And then there was the wisdom of Maria Mitchell to make decisions in her days as a professor at Vassar College so as to enable women coming after her to make the same kind of decisions from fair ground the same as men, although she made the wrong decision in regards of her salary to begin with. - The logic isn't that "I, personally, can live with this decision", but rather - Is it fair if other women have to accept their fewer opportunities/smaller salaries etc. because of my decisions?

[Moire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required for everyone, but most especially women going into the sciences. This literally changed the way I look at the world in a very fundamental way. What is considered "women's work" and "men's work" is as changeable as the wind: despite the widespread question now-a-days of whether women aren't as cut out for or aren't as interested in science, back in the 1800s women were doing science all over the place. It was considered perfectly suited for women because at that time science was orderly, clockwork, hierarchical, so what better thing for women to study? Men studied the classics in order to become clergy or lawyers, or take on some lucrative profession. Science wasn't a profession, more of a hobby. In that environment, women were encouraged to learn science. In fact, women's schools at the time had science-heavy curricula, while men's schools were exclusively focused on the classics. By the late 19th century however things were changing. Scientific discoveries were rocking the orderly, clockwork picture of the world. Science became a profession, and what's more a lucrative and potentially destabilizing one. And so began the steady and continual discouragement of women in science. Articles were written proclaiming that women's minds weren't scientific, and the attitude that a woman scientist was an unsexed woman became so widespread that the epitaphs for all women scientists contained obligatory reassurances that, yes, she was a scientist, but more than that, she was a *woman* who enjoyed cooking, cleaning, knitting. And that dubious legacy has lasted until this day. Please read this book!

[Readersaurus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way to get my attention from page one (well, ix)!

"When Lilla was learning to read, the Nantucket Athenaeum had seemed like a temple, and the librarian at the time, Miss Mitchell, had seemed almost a goddess."

A really interesting read, looking not only at advances in astronomy and the life of Maria Mitchell, but an examination of how progress does not always progress, and culturally held beliefs can change so significantly and still be thought to be immutable.

When Maria Mitchell was a girl, astronomy and the other "hard" sciences were considered ideal pursuits for girls and young women. Intellectual men were expected to study the classics, languages, literature, and religion, in preparation for entering the "true" professions of law and the clergy. During her lifetime, post Civil War, Mitchell saw expectations for women and girls shift and contract in ways that were easily observable and saddened her.

Michell devoted the latter part of her career to encouraging and teaching other women. She offered them clear advice that holds true for any of us today: to think for one's self and to never hold back from doing one's best work.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maria Mitchell, one of the earliest American astronomers, was an amazing women. Raised in a Quaker family, she learned astronomy at the hand of her father, studied higher mathematics on her own, and they went on to a successful career as an astronomer and college professor in the mid-1800's.

This book, though, doesn't do her justice. Bergland ranges far and wide from her subject to investigate the context of the times and the other personalities who dominated astronomy to the detriment of a fully filled in portrait of Mitchell. I ended up skimming quite a bit. There must be a better biography of her.

[CLM]

I don't recall why I wrote to this author but she expressed interest in Carney's House Party. The review in last week's Boston Globe makes an interesting point about the self-reliance and achievements of women in 19th century Nantucket being both valued and necessary because the men were away at sea for long periods of time. This provided the right environment for a scientist like Maria Mitchell.

[Nickel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly fascinating book that detailed the life of Maria Mitchell, one of the first women scientists [astronomer:] in America. In addition to detailing Mitchell's life, the book goes through the changes that science went through in the 19th century and the role that Mitchell played. I found it interesting that science was considered women's work in the early to mid-19th century and also how the later part of the 19th century dealt a blow to women in science (and the feminist movement in general).

[Jan]

Very good bio of Mitchell's life in Nantucket, trip to Europe, professorship at Vassar and death in Lynn, MA. Interesting how progressive education was on the island of Nantucket in the early to mid 1800's. Also, that science was thought of as a profession for women though the era passed and women were not even allowed to study science in college in years to follow.