Mary Somerville - A Queen of Science?

Whatever difficulty we might have
 in the middle of the nineteenth century
choosing a king of science,
 there could be no question whatsoever
as to the queen.

The Morning Post, 2 December 1872, Obituary of Mary Somerville

It is often said that Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was the world’s first scientist. The earliest usage of the word listed by the Oxford English Dictionary is found in a review of her 1834 book, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. At the time, those who pursued scientific research were commonly referred to as ‘men of science’. The very epitome of a 19th-century ‘accomplished lady’ – Somerville painted, played piano, read multiple languages and was a beloved wife and mother – her femininity couldn’t possibly be called into question by calling her a man of any kind. It is thus proposed that her reviewer grasped for a new way to describe Somerville, and landed on scientist.

However, this telling of the emergence of the word scientist undermines Somerville’s place in the scientific communities of her day, reducing her to a novelty, or an unconventional problem, owing to her gender. Moreover, the word scientist was not used to describe Somerville at all and took decades to catch on.

Rather than a scientist, Somerville was recognised as one of the “most distinguished astronomers and philosophers” of the nineteenth-century (Morning Post, 2/12/1872). In 1812, when she began making a name for herself within scientific circles, she did so as a mathematician.  Her first publications were solutions to mathematical puzzles published in The New Series of the Mathematical Repository. Through this periodical she started corresponding with William Wallace, a professor at the Royal Military College, then in Marlow. When Somerville visited him, Wallace arranged for a visit to well-known astronomer William Herschel, who wrote that he would be “very happy to see the Lady... the trait in the character of a Lady to be a good mathematician without Wrangleship will be highly esteemed”. Herschel was saying here that he would be delighted to meet Somerville, and that he respected her mathematical knowledge even though she had not studied at Cambridge University (where the best students were named ‘wranglers’).

That Somerville’s mathematical aptitude inspired respect rather than condescension is borne out through her extensive correspondence and her fascinating autobiography. Mathematician Augustus De Morgan took books out of the University of London library on her behalf, whilst Charles Babbage and George Boole gifted her copies of their own work. Somerville provided assistance to others, for example checking the ‘moon calculations’ of John William Lubbock or passing on papers and books to those who required them. For Somerville, mathematics was a way to understand nature, and so her mathematical studies were done alongside chemical experiments and botanical investigations, as was very common at the time.

Somerville’s reputation as a mathematician lasted throughout her lifetime. Benjamin Peirce visited her in Naples in 1870 and later sent her his book on Linear Associative Algebra, inscribed to “Mrs Mary Somerville, with the sincere admiration and the profound respect of the Author’’. Peirce’s work motivated Somerville to begin studying quaternions, a form of non-commutative algebra, when already ninety years old and it seems she intended to write a reader’s guide to help students studying this advanced mathematics. Crucially, during her lifetime Somerville was seen not just as an exceptional mathematician ‘for a woman’, but was someone whose opinions and interpretations were sought after and valued.

What’s more, Somerville was by no means alone as a woman in scientific society. She was surrounded not least by fellow mathematician Ada Lovelace, geologists Mary Lyell and Charlotte Murchison, and astronomer Annarella Smyth. Many of these women worked collaboratively with their husbands, or another male family member, to whom most of their work is attributed. This trend was recognised in 1831 by Charles Lyell who supposed that had “Mrs. Somerville been married to La Place, or some mathematician, we should never have heard of her work. She would have merged it in her husband's and passed it off as his”.  Luckily, Somerville’s actual husband was interested enough in science to be elected a fellow of numerous scientific societies, and to share this access with his wife, without being much interested in publishing his own work.

On her death, 150 years ago this week, obituaries of Somerville appeared in newspapers throughout Europe and North America. Without a specific theorem to attach to her name, Somerville’s place in the history of mathematics was lost during the twentieth century. She has had somewhat of a renaissance recently, frequently appearing in lists of women in STEM, podcasts, and is also featured on a £10 banknote.

Beyond being a role model to future mathematicians for her tenacity and passion, Somerville’s trajectory as a mathematician demonstrates the importance of collaboration and interdisciplinarity in mathematics. Her letters place her at the centre of an active and reciprocal network of mathematicians and natural philosophers, underscoring the importance of many different forms of work in the building and sustenance of a mathematical community.