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Mary Somerville

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   Mary Somerville
   Mary Somerville

   Mary Somerville ( December 26, 1780 – November 28, 1872) was a Scottish
   science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in
   science was discouraged.

   She was the daughter of Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, and was
   born at the manse of Jedburgh, in the Borders, the house of her
   mother's sister, wife of Dr Thomas Somerville (1741–1830), author of My
   Own Life and Times, whose son would become Mary's second husband. She
   received a rather desultory education, and mastered algebra and Euclid
   in secret after she had left school, and without any external help. In
   1804 she married her distant cousin, the Russian Consul in London,
   Captain Samuel Greig, who died in 1806; they had two children.

   After the death of her husband the inheritance gave her the freedom to
   pursue intellectual interests. In 1812 she married another cousin, Dr
   William Somerville (1771–1860), inspector of the Army Medical Board,
   who encouraged and greatly aided her in the study of the physical
   sciences. They had a further four children. After her marriage she made
   the acquaintance of the most eminent scientific men of the time, among
   whom her talents had attracted attention before she had acquired
   general fame, Laplace paying her the compliment of stating that she was
   the only woman who understood his works. She studied mathematics and
   astronomy, and became the second woman scientist to receive recognition
   in the United Kingdom after Caroline Herschel.

   Having been requested by Lord Brougham to translate for the Society for
   the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace, she
   greatly popularized its form, and its publication in 1831, under the
   title of The Mechanism of the Heavens, at once made her famous. Her
   other works are the Connection of the Physical Sciences (1834),
   Physical Geography (1848), and Molecular and Microscopic Science
   (1869). In 1835, she and Caroline Herschel became the first women
   members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1838 she and her husband
   went to Italy, where she spent much of the rest of her life.

   Much of the popularity of her writings was due to their clear and crisp
   style and the underlying enthusiasm for her subject which pervaded
   them. In 1835 she received a pension of £300 from government. She died
   at Naples on November 28, 1872, and is buried in the English Cemetery
   there. In the following year there appeared her autobiographical
   Personal Recollections, consisting of reminiscences written during her
   old age, and of great interest both for what they reveal of her own
   character and life and the glimpses they afford of the literary and
   scientific society of bygone times.

   Somerville College, Oxford, was named after Mary Somerville. The term "
   scientist" was first coined by William Whewell in an 1834 review of
   Somerville's On the Connexion of the Sciences.

   Somerville Island (54°44'N 130°17'W) off British Columbia near the
   border with Alaska was named after her by Sir William Edward Parry.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville"
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