Mary Somerville was one of Scotland’s greatest scientists. She studied mathematics and astrology, wrote widely across scientific disciplines, and was hailed by the Morning Post newspaper as “the queen of science”.
Born Mary Fairfax in Jedburgh in 1780 and raised at the family home in Burntisland, Fife, she developed an appetite for learning from a young age.
In 1831, she published ‘Mechanism of the Heavens’ to great acclaim, followed by ‘On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences’ in 1834. The work included a mathematical prediction of a yet-undiscovered planet orbiting Uranus. Her calculations inspired John Crouch Adams to search the skies for Neptune, which was discovered in 1846.
She would go on to publish another three books including her ‘Personal Reflections’, in which she wrote: “From my earliest years my mind revolved against oppression and tyranny, and I resented the injustice of the world in denying all those privileges of education to my sex which were so lavishly bestowed on men."
A lifelong liberal, Somerville was a great advocate for women’s education and refused to take sugar in her tea in protest to the transatlantic slave trade. She was one of the first women to be made honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835, was the first signatory on John Stuart Mill’s unsuccessful petition for women’s suffrage in 1868, and tutored Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.
Somerville College, Oxford, is named after her, as well as a lunar crater, an asteroid, a ship and an island in Canada.
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History of Scientific Women: Mary Somerville
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