Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell ( mə-RY-ə; August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, librarian, naturalist, and educator. In 1847, she discovered a comet named 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) that was later known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet" in her honor. She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Christian VIII of Denmark in 1848. Mitchell was the first internationally known woman to work as both a professional astronomer and a professor of astronomy after accepting a position at Vassar College in 1865. She was also the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mitchell is the namesake of the Maria Mitchell Association, the Maria Mitchell Observatory, and the Maria Mitchell Aquarium.

Early years (1818–1846) Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Lydia Coleman Mitchell, a library worker, and William Mitchell, a schoolteacher and amateur astronomer. The third of ten children, Mitchell and her siblings were raised in the Quaker religion. William Mitchell educated all his children about nature and astronomy and her mother's employment at two libraries gave them access to a variety of knowledge. Mitchell reportedly showed an early interest and talent in astronomy and mathematics. Her father taught her to operate a number of astronomical instruments including chronometers, sextants, refracting telescopes, and Dolland telescopes. Mitchell often assisted her father in his work with local seamen and in his observations of the night sky. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months, sometimes years, to manage affairs at home while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women of the island.

After attending Elizabeth Gardner small school as a young child, Mitchell enrolled in the North Grammar school, where her father was the first principal. When Maria Mitchell was 11 years old, her father founded his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. In 1831, at the age of 12, Mitchell aided her father in calculating the exact moment of a solar eclipse. William Mitchell's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies until she was about the age of 16. Later, she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before opening her own school in 1835. Mitchell developed experimental teaching methods, which she later employed during her professorship at Vassar College. She allowed nonwhite children to attend her school, though the local public school was still racially segregated. In 1836, Mitchell began working as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position she held for 20 years. The institution's limited operating hours enabled Mitchell to assist her father with a series of astronomical observations and geographical calculations for the United States Coast Survey and to continue her own education. Mitchell and her father worked in a small observatory constructed on the roof of the Pacific Bank building with a four-inch equatorial telescope provided by the survey. In addition to looking for nebulae and double stars, the pair produced latitudes and longitudes by calculating the altitudes of stars and the culminations and occultations of the Moon, respectively. In 1843, Mitchell converted to Unitarianism, although she did not physically attend a Unitarian Church until more than twenty years later. Her departure from the Quaker faith did not cause a break with her family, with whom she appears to have remained close. Historians have limited knowledge about this period in Mitchell's life because few of her personal documents remain from before 1846. Members of the Mitchell family believed she destroyed many of her personal documents in order to keep them private, having witnessed personal papers blown through the street by the Great Fire of 1846, and because fear of another fire persisted.

Discovery of "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (1847–1849) At 10:50 pm on the night of October 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) using a Dollond refracting telescope with three inches of aperture and forty-six-inch focal length. She had noticed an unknown object flying through the sky in an area where she previously had not noticed any other activity and believed it to be a comet. The comet later became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet." She published a notice of her discovery in Silliman's Journal in January 1848 under her father's name. The following month, she submitted her calculation of the comet's orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer. Mitchell was celebrated at the Seneca Falls Convention for the discovery and calculation later that year. On October 6, 1848, Mitchell was awarded a gold medal prize for her discovery by King Christian VIII of Denmark. This award had been previously established by King Frederick VI of Denmark to honor the "first discoverer" of each new telescopic comet, a comet too faint to be seen with the naked eye. A question of credit temporarily arose because Francesco de Vico had independently discovered the same comet two days after Mitchell but reported it to European authorities first. Mitchell was declared the first to discover the comet and she was awarded the prize. The only previous women to discover a comet were the astronomers Caroline Herschel and Maria Margarethe Kirch. Mitchell's medal was inscribed with line 257 of Book I of Virgil's Georgics: "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" (Not in vain do we watch the setting and the rising [of the stars]). Though the award was sent via letter in 1848, Mitchell did not physically receive the award in Nantucket until March 1849. She became the first American to receive this medal and the first woman to receive an award in astronomy.

Intermediate years (1849–1864)

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