Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell 1818-89, American astronomer and educator, b. Nantucket, Mass. Mitchell taught school in Nantucket, and later became a librarian. On Oct. 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered a comet (1847 VI) not far from Polaris. She was the first woman to be elected (1848) to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1857 a group of Boston area women presented her with a 5-in. Alvan Clark refractor, with which she expanded her studies of sunspots, planets, and nebulae. By taking daily photographs of the sun, she made many discoveries about the nature of sunspots. In 1865 Mitchell became professor of astronomy at Vassar College and taught several distinguished women astronomers. After her death her students continued to visit her birthplace in Nantucket; it is preserved as the Mitchell House. The Maria Mitchell Observatory was built next door, and in 1912 Harvard established a research program there. In 1913 a 7.5-in. (19.1 cm) photographic refractor was added. The Observatory has an archive of over 8,000 photographs of variable star fields, and offers a summer program for young people about to enter college.

Bibliography: See biographies by P. M. Kendall (1896), M. K. Babbitt (1912), and H. Wright (1949, repr. 1959).

Mitchell, Maria (1818–1889), astronomer.Born on Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island, Mitchell was the daughter of a Quaker schoolmaster who also checked the accuracy of the chronometers of Nantucket's whaling fleet, a task in which Maria assisted. As librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum from 1836 to 1857, she had ample leisure to pursue her astronomical studies. The precision of her observations attracted the notice of leading scientists, including William C. Bond, director of the Harvard Observatory, and Alexander Dallas Bach, head of the U.S. Coast Survey. Her discovery of a new comet in October 1847 added to her reputation. The comet was named for her, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1848) and admitted to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1850). In 1865, though lacking a college degree herself, she joined the faculty of the newly opened Vassar Female College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where the founder, brewer Matthew Vassar, built her an observatory with a twelve‐inch telescope, the third largest in America at the time. Although refusing to give grades or take attendance, she won recognition as an inspiring teacher. Several of her students pursued careers in science or other disciplines. Continuing her astronomical research, she photographed solar phenomena and published on solar eclipses and surface changes of the planets. A founder of the Association for the Advancement of Women in 1873, Mitchell was particularly interested in furthering the cause of women in science. “Nature made woman an observer,” she observed; “the natural sciences are well fitted for woman's power of minute observation.”
See also Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S.; Education: Collegiate Education; Observatories; Physical Sciences; Science: Revolutionary War to World War I.

Bibliography

Phebe Mitchell Kendall , Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals, 1896.
Helen L. Morgan , Maria Mitchell: First Lady of American Astronomy, 1977.

Paul S. Boyer