![]() ![]() Neeley's book is the latest in the series of Cambridge Science Biographies, and yet it is not a biography in the usual sense. Indeed, Neeley's book offers ample evidence for "the conclusion that Mary Somerville was at the apex of the prestige system of science in her day" (224, borrowing a phrase from Hilary Rose). ![]() ![]() In the scientific community of the early nineteenth century, such scholarly synthesis was valued just as much as, if not more than, original discovery. Such diverse personages as James Clerk Maxwell, George Eliot, and Alexander von Humboldt number among Somerville's scores of eager readers. Her reputation as a scientist rests on her astonishing ability to digest, interpret, and synthesize the current state of knowledge in the physical sciences for a broad, scientifically literate audience. Her reputation as a mathematician rests on her celebrated translation of and commentary on Pierre-Simon Laplace's five-volume Traité de Méchanique Céleste (1799-1825), first published in 1831 as Mechanism of the Heavens. She was an intellectual polymath, a natural philosopher, and a "cultivator of science" (35, following Sommerville's admiring contemporary, William Whewell). Somerville, like most nineteenth-century British "men of science," doesn't fit the twentieth-century stereotype of the single-minded scientific specialist. Towering over them all is the long-lived, prolific, and extraordinarily influential Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville (1780-1872), the intriguing subject of Kathryn A. In the period from 1700 through 1850, perhaps a dozen women scientists earn brief mention in the historical record. The first officially recognized woman of science, Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415), is remembered not for her creative life, but for her violent death-after which women disappear entirely from the historical narrative of science for another 1300 years. The appearance of women in canonical histories of mathematics and science is peculiar and puzzling. Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind, by Kathryn A. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: ![]()
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