The 19th Century Pioneer Woman Mathematician

Intrigued by the fascinating x’s and y’s of math questions, Mary Fairfax of Scotland delved into the study of algebra and mathematics when she was just 14 years old. Her father, who was against her wish, married to her cousin, a Russian Navy captain, when she was just twenty four. But an opportunity came knocking her door upon the death of her husband. After his death, she returned to Edinburgh, and resumed her studies in maths and science.

Widowhood made her comfortable as it left her inheritance and made her independent. Mary was free to study according to her personal convictions. She mastered J. Ferguson's Astronomy and became a student of Isaac Newton's Principia. Her circle of friends in the scientific community was limited, but she corresponded frequently with Scotsman William Wallace, who was a mathematics master at a military college. Upon his advice Mary obtained a small library of works to provide her with a sound background in mathematics. She soon began experimenting with magnetism and produced a series of writings on astronomy, chemistry, physics and mathematics.

She remarried in 1812 to another cousin, Dr. William Somerville, who was a surgeon in the British Navy. Dr. Somerville was very supportive of his wife's intellectual endeavours. The couple had four children.

Mary’s scientific investigations began in the summer of 1825, when she carried out experiments on magnetism. In 1826 she presented her paper entitled "The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum" to the Royal Society. Her work attracted favourable notice. And, aside from the astronomical observations of Caroline Herschel, it was the first paper by a woman to be read to the Royal Society and published in its Philosophical Transactions.

In 1827 Mary, was persuaded to write a popularized rendition of Laplace's Mecanique Céleste and Newton's Principia by Lord Brougham on behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Unsure of her qualifications, Mary undertook the project in secrecy. The Mechanism of the Heavens was a great success, probably the most famous of her mathematical writings. In recognition, a portrait bust of her was commissioned in the Royal Society, London.

While in Europe in 1832-1833, she completed her second book, which was published in 1834, The Connection of the Physical Sciences, an account of physical phenomena and the connections between the physical sciences. She and Caroline Herschel were elected in 1835 to the Royal Astronomical Society, the first women to receive such an honour. She was given a pension of 200 pounds per year from the King of England and received honorary memberships from various scientific organizations, including eleven Italian scientific societies between 1840 and 1857.

In 1848, at the age of sixty eight, Mary Fairfax Somerville published another book, Physical Geography, which was widely used in schools and universities for the next fifty years.

Her last book, Molecular and Microscopic Science, was published in 1869. It was a summary of the most recent discoveries in chemistry and physics. In that same year she completed her autobiography, which parts were published by her daughter Martha after her death. It is said that although she became deaf and frail in her later years, she retained her mental faculties and even continued to, in her words, "read books on the higher algebra for four or five hours in the morning, and even to solve problems" until her peaceful death at the age of ninety two in Naples.

Adapted from Bio.