Herschel, Caroline Lucretia

(b. Hannover, Germany, 16 March 1750; d. Hannover, 9 January 1848)

astronomy.

Caroline Herschel was the fifth of six surviving children of Isaac and Anna Ilse Herschel, and younger sister of William. After Isaac’s death in 1767 Caroline became a household drudge, and so in 1772 William fetched her to live with him in Bath, England. She then began a career as a singer; but as William became obsessed with astronomy he called for her continual assistance, oblivious to the damaging effects of this on her own career. Thus, if William was polishing a telescopic mirror, Caroline “was even obliged to feed him by putting the Vitals by bits into his mouth.”

In 1782 William gave up music for astronomy and moved to the neighborhood of Windsor Castle; Caroline accompanied him, there by ending her musical career. William now encouraged Caroline to “sweep” for comets on her own account; and in 1783, while doing this, she found three new nebulae, including the companion to the Andromeda nebula. But soon William was himself committed to sweeping for nebulae, and at night Caroline was often required to be on hand to write down his observations. In the daytime, besides managing the household and entertaining visitors, she carried out the extensive routine calculations, prepared catalogs and papers for publication, and even ground and polished mirrors; in 1787 this work was recognized with a salary of £50 from the king. Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered no fewer than eight comets, thus earning a reputation as an astronomer in her own right; and in 1798 her revision of Flamsteed’s catalog of stars was published by the Royal Society.

William married in 1788; and Caroline subsequently lived in lodgings, although she continued to collaborate in his astronomical work. After William died in 1822, she returned to Hannover, where she spent the rest of her life, vigorous and alert to the end. In 1828 she received the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for her manuscript reduction and arrangement of William’s nebulae and star clusters; and in her old age many honors were bestowed upon her.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Caroline Herschel’s Catalogue of Stars Taken From Mr. Flamsteed’s Observations Contained in the Second Volume of the Historia Coelestis, and not Inserted in the British Catalogue, With an Index to Point out Every Observation in That Volume Belonging to the Stars of the British Catalogue [and] a Collection of Errata was published by the Royal Society (London, 1798); her “Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of a Catalogue in Zones of All the Star Clusters and Nebulae Observed by Sir William Herschel,” which remained in MS, was indispensable to John Herschel’s review of northern nebulae. Her more important observations of comets are reported in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 77 (1787), 1–3;79 (1789). 151–153; (1792). 23–24; (1794), 1; (1796), 131–132, and repr. in The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel, J. L. E. Dreyer, ed., I (London, 1912), 309–310, 327–328, 438, 451, 528; Dreyer also includes biographical material. Other works with extensive biographical material are Mrs. John Herschel, Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Hersehel (London, 1876; 2nd ed., 1879); and Constance A. Lubbock, ed., The Herschel Chronicle (Cambridge, 1933).

II. Secondary Literature. The biographical notice by John Herschel which appeared in Athenaeum, no. 1056 (22 Jan. 1848), 84, is repr. with additions in Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 17 (1847–1848), 120–122. Excellent short biographies are Agnes M. Cierke, in Dictionary of National Biography, IX, 711–714; and The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (London, 1895), pp. 115–141. The chapters on Caroline in Marianne Kirlew, Famous Sisters of Great Men (London, 1906), and Helen Ashton and Katharine Davies, I Had a Sister (London, 1937), are derivative. Most studies of William Herschel discuss the assistance given him by Caroline.

Michael A. Hoskin