Customer Reviews

Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind (Cambridge Science Biographies)

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A very distinguished female scientist, in whose long life of 92 years, she experienced and contributed to Victorian science. Neeley takes us back to that era. She shows how Somerville became well known to the educated via such books as "Mechanism of the Heavens" (1831) and "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences" (1834). They were well received and helped popularise science, and also the (shocking!) concept that a woman could write such analytic prose. That such deeds were not a male preserve.

To be sure, from our vantage point, some of Somerville's analyses may seem strained. Prior to James Maxwell's discoveries of his equations that unified electricity and magnetism, those effects could only be treated in a vague, qualitative fashion. Neeley's excerpts of Somerville's writings reveal this. Along with a florid, turgid style. But keep in mind that this was the accepted style of that era. And until Maxwell came along, her speculations were arguably the best any scientist could do.