86 (. WOMRN MATHEMATICIANS
in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1826 and, as mentioned, quoted by John
Farrar and thereby made famous throughout the United States.
In an interesting reciprocity with the French translation of Newton's Principia
made by the Marquise du Chatelet, Mary Somerville made a translation of Laplace's
Mecanique celeste, (as, it will be recalled, Nathaniel Bowditch had also done). Like
the Marquise and Bowditch, Mary Somerville went far beyond merely translating,
supplementing Laplace's laconic style with extensive commentaries. This work was
published in 1831 and was a great success. Her book The Connection of the Physical
Sciences (1834) went through many editions, and its speculation on the existence
of an eighth planet, eventually to be known as Neptune, beyond Uranus (which
had been discovered in 1781), inspired one of the co-discoverers of that planet.
According to Baker (1948). her next book, Physical Geography (1848), was less
successful from her own point of view, although not from the point of view of the
experts. She was disappointed that it went through only six editions, and blamed
its lack of commercial success on the appearance of cheap imitations that were
"just keeping within the letter of the law [on plagiarism]." She began it in 1839
but had to delay because of her husband's illness and the need to revise her earlier
book. Then, just when the manuscript was ready to go to press, another book on
geography, entitled Cosmos and written by the great German scholar Alexander
von Humboldt (1769 1859) appeared, apparently discouraging her so greatly that
she considered burning her manuscript and had to be persuaded by friends to allow
it to be published. It finally appeared in 1848. The reviews from those capable of
reading it were glqwing. Humboldt himself wrote to her, "I do not know of any
book on geography in any language that can be compared with yours. You have
not missed any fact or any of the grand sights of nature," and he signed himself
"the author of the imprudent Cosmos.'' The subject of geography was not yet
established in the curriculum in Britain, and her two-volume work did much to
gain it a secure place.
As a result of these and other works, Mary Somerville was elected to a number
of professional societies, including the Societe de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle
in Geneva (1834), the Royal Irish Academy (1834), the Royal Astronomical Society
(1835), the American Geographical and Statistical Society (1857), and the Italian
Geographical Society (1870). She also won a number of academic honors. Recog-
nizing the need for women to be liberated from their traditional confinement to the
home, Mary Somerville was the first to sign the petition to Parliament organized
by the philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), asking that the right to vote
be extended to women. (Together with his wife, Mill had written a book entitled
The Enfranchisement of Women and had also published Mary Wollstonecraft's The
Subjugation of Women.) As in the United States, this right was finally granted just
after the end of World War I. In 1862 she petitioned the University of London on
behalf of women seeking degrees. (Note that she was 82 years old at the time!) Al-
though this petition was rejected at that time, the University was awarding degrees
to women only a few years later. Her long life finally came to an end near the end
of her ninety-second year, on November 29, 1872, in Naples, Italy, where much of
her geographical research had been done.
Florence Nightingale. Occasionally, new mathematics is created when people who
arc not professional mathematicians exercise their mathematical imaginations to
