1 - Head among the Stars, Feet Firm upon the Earth: The Problem of Categorizing Mary Somerville

Summary

Mrs. Somerville is the lady who, Laplace says, is the only woman who understands his works. She draws beautifully, and while her head is up among the stars, her feet are firm upon the earth.

–Maria Edgeworth to Miss Ruxton, January 17, 1822

The innovative is, by definition, hard to categorize.

–Clifford Geertz, “Blurred Genres: The Reconfiguration of Social Thought”

Mary Somerville was an eminent scientist. She achieved an international reputation that established her as both the leading woman of science in Great Britain during the nineteenth century and as one of that century's most celebrated intellectual women. (Patterson 1983) Somerville's greatest scholarly strength was in mathematics, which she mastered at a very high level, but her expertise extended throughout the established and emerging physical and life sciences. She was the first woman to publish experimental results in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society as well as the first – and only – woman to have her bust placed in the great hall of the Royal Society. Hers was the first name on John Stuart Mill's petition to obtain the vote for women in Great Britain. (PR 345) When the founders of Oxford University's first nondenominational women's college sought a name to exemplify ideals of high intellectual achievement for women, “Somerville” seemed an obvious choice. (Adams 1996)

In a letter written in 1829, David Brewster pronounced her “certainly the most extraordinary woman in Europe – a Mathematician of the very first rank.”