Mary Somerville

On Molecular and Microscopic Science Mary Somerville

Mary Fairfax Somerville (26 December 1780 - 29 November 1872) was a Scottish science writer and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel. When John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and economist, organised a massive petition to Parliament to give women the right to vote, he had Mary put her signature first on the petition. When she died in 1872, Mary Somerville was hailed by The Morning Post as "The Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science."