The underused talent of Mary Somerville

The story of Mary Somerville I consider it to be very impressing because of her very little
education, only one year of formal education, but still managed to succeed being mainly self-taught.
Living at a time when the education of women was not encouraged, Mary Somerville was still eager
to give the world something new. I personally see her as a not fully used talent that could do a lot
more if the social environment was different.

Born in Jedburgh in 1780 Mary Somerville spent much of her childhood in Burntisland, a
small town, directly opposite the city of Edinburgh, where she lived her young life as a curious
child who was determined to learn through reading and conversation and persisted with
mathematics despite her father thinking it was bad for her health. For one year, she was sent to a
school run by Miss Primrose in Musselburgh where she learned accomplishments for young ladies,
such as French, Italian, music, drawing and dancing, but where she was also forced to wear a metal
support to keep her shoulders back. It was only by chance that the young Mary discovered her flair
for mathematics while she was listening the geometry lessons given to his brother by his tutor. One
time when his brother failed to answer a question, Mary involuntary said the answer to it. Being
very surprised and overwhelmed, the tutor allowed her to carry on as his unofficial pupil.1

Living with her family in London, she moved in intellectual circles with some of the most
eminent scientific and literary figures in British and European society.

Mary wrote major scientific works, as well as translations and journal articles for which she
received distinction from learned societies throughout the world. The main scientific achievements
are her annotated translation of Mécanique céleste, by Pierre-Simon Laplace which is considered to
be extremely difficult even for specialists to understand but she demonstrated to be enough
competent to make not only a translation of this work, but to add explanations and diagrams to
make it more accessible, she also produced three other scientific books: On the Connexion of the
Physical Sciences, (1834); Physical geography (1848); and On Molecular and Microscopic Science
(1869).

In the sixth edition of: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, (1842), she speculated
that if calculations and observations did not adequately describe the orbit of Uranus, there may be
another unseen body whose mass and orbit were having an effect. This statement gave another
astronomer, John Couch Adams, the idea of making mathematical calculations which predicted the
existence and location of Neptune.

During her life, Mary Somerville occupied a very important role in the physical sciences. “Her
books brought readers up to date with subjects ranging from astronomy and anthropology to microscopy
and geology. She introduced the English-speaking world to Pierre Simon Laplace’s celestial mechanics,

1 Article: MARY SOMERVILLE: Mathematician, Astronomer, 2019

https://minervascientifica.co.uk/mary-somerville/
wrote an outstanding survey of physical geography, and elucidated the common bonds between the
sciences at a time when they were being carved up into distinct disciplines.”2

More recently she featured in Mike Leigh’s 2014 feature film Mr. Turner, which depicts
Somerville taking a prism and a hammer from her handbag to demonstrate an experiment about light. In
October she appeared on the new £10 note of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In conclusion, I do believe that if living in another era she would have been able to give the world
a lot more than she manage to produce. But considering that the victorian era was extremely unfavourable
for women in science it is to very much appreciate that she had the courage to expose herself in a world of
men.

2 Article: Mary Somerville’s vision of science, 2018

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3817