1.29.2012
Vassar Professor and Astronomer in the Civil War era
Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) was an American astronomer who discovered a comet in her telescope in 1847, which became known as the Miss Mitchell's Comet and brought her international fame. She was the first professor appointed at the new Vassar College and the first acknowledged woman astronomer in the United States.
Childhood
Maria (pronounced ma-RY-ah) Mitchell was born August 1, 1818 on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, daughter of Quakers William and Lydia Coleman Mitchell. She had nine brothers and sisters. Her mother's side of the family traced its ancestry to Benjamin Franklin.
The Quaker religion taught intellectual equality between the sexes, and the island of Nantucket was unusual for its time in regard to equality for women. Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors lived in relative independence for months and sometimes years, managing the family's affairs while their husbands were at sea.
Like other Quakers Maria's parents valued education and insisted on giving their daughters the same quality of education their sons received. Not many girls born in the early 1800s were lucky enough to have a father like William Mitchell, a dedicated amateur astronomer and teacher.
Mitchell rated chronometers for use by the Nantucket whaling fleet in celestial navigation, and was delighted with the early talent his daughter demonstrated for science. Instead of considering such interests useless for a girl, he taught her mathematics and astronomy, using his own telescope at home. At age twelve, Maria helped her father calculate the exact moment of an annular eclipse.
After attending Elizabeth Gardener's small school in early childhood, Maria attended the North Grammar school where her father William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years later, when Maria was eleven, her father built his own school. There, she was a student as well as a teaching assistant.
After William Mitchell's school closed, Maria attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's School for Young Ladies. Later she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant. Maria left in 1835 at the age of 17 to open her own school to train girls in science and mathematics. She rented a room and put an advertisement in the newspaper.
Maria decided to close her school a year later in 1836 after she was offered a job as the first librarian of Nantucket's Atheneum Library where she worked for eighteen years. This job was perfect for her - she was earning a good salary and had time to study and read many books, further developing her passion for knowledge.
While Maria spent her days at the library, she spent her nights observing the sky with her father. William Mitchell had been hired as cashier of the Pacific Bank, which came with living quarters attached to the bank. He built an observatory on the roof and installed a brand-new four-inch telescope, which he used to make star observations for the United States Coast Guard and Maria helped him with the measurements.
Career in Science and Education
On a clear night in October 1847, at the age of 29, Maria stood on that roof, focusing her telescope on a faraway star, five degrees above the North Star where there had been no star before. She had memorized the night sky and was sure of her observation. It occurred to her that this might be a comet, and recorded its coordinates. The next night the star had moved, and Maria was sure it was a comet.
