Maria Mitchell
1818-1889
First person to discover a comet
by telescope; first woman
to work as a professional
astronomer in the U.S.B
E SURE YOU’RE THE FIRST woman
somewhere,” an editor advised
budding photographer Dickey
Chapelle as World War II esca-
lated. Chapelle took the advice and
sneaked ashore with a Marine unit
during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, flouting a ban on
female journalists in combat zones. She temporarily lost
her military press accreditation but went on to earn a
reputation as a fearless war correspondent.
Since National Geographic’s founding in 1888, women
have churned out achievements in science and explora-
tion, often with only fleeting recognition. They mapped
the ocean floor, conquered the highest peaks, unearthed
ancient civilizations, set deep-sea diving records, and
flew around the world. They talked their way onto wars’
front lines and traveled across continents.
“There is no reason why a woman cannot go wherever
a man goes, and further,” explorer Harriet Chal mers
Adams said in 1920. “If a woman be fond of travel, if
she has love of the strange, the mysterious, and the lost,
there is nothing that will keep her at home.”
Yet in the magazine women were often a side note,
overshadowed by famous husbands. Matthew Stirling’s
byline was on more than a dozen articles detailing his
discoveries in Mesoamerican archaeology, but his wife,
Marion, who helped run the expeditions, had only one
story published under her own byline: on keeping house
in the field. “Damn, damn, damn!” a frustrated Anne
Morrow Lindbergh wrote in her diary in 1933, about life
with her famous aviator husband, Charles. She was the
first American woman to earn a glider pilot’s license,
and she won awards for her navigation skills. “I am sick
of being this ‘handmaiden to the Lord.’ ”
Others were ignored by contemporaries. When
geographer Marie Tharp offered proof of the theory of
tectonic plate shift in the early 1950s, a colleague dis-
missed it as “girl talk.” At least one, 1920s-era journalist
Juliet Bredon, found it easier to publish in National
Geographic under a man’s name. Even world-renowned
women of their time, such as 19th-century astronomer
Maria Mitchell, struggled to get fair pay.
National Geographic’s archive holds millions of
photographs and documents from stories, research
grants, and films since the Society’s start. Stacks of
microfiche filled with faded manuscripts and folders
of typewritten correspondence reveal the stories of
National Geographic’s trailblazing women. From the
past to the present, we salute some of them here.In the 1800s, residents of Nantucket,
Massachusetts, famously kept their
telescopes trained on the sea, await-
ing the return of local whaling and
fishing boats. Maria Mitchell turned
hers to the stars. Mitchell grew up
helping her father, an amateur astron-
omer, make complex navigational
calculations for whaling captains,
determine eclipse times, and record
movements of astral features.
At 10:30 p.m. on October 1, 1847,
the 29-year-old was on the roof of
the Pacific Bank, where her father
had built a simple observatory.
Wielding her telescope, she spotted
something that wasn’t on her astro-
nomical charts: a comet.
Sixteen years earlier, King Fred-
erick VI of Denmark had offered a
gold medal to the first person to dis-
cover a comet by telescope. Mitch-
ell claimed the prize. Her discovery
and ensuing career made her the
first professional female astronomer
in the U.S. Within the year, she was
elected to the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences—the first woman
invited to join. She visited observa-
tories around the world and became
an outspoken advocate for women
in science, as well as an abolitionist
and a suffragist.
Mitchell taught astronomy at the
newly opened Vassar College, where
she studied planets, stars, comets,
and eclipses—and fought to be paid
the same as her male colleagues.
Comet 1847-VI, which she’d discov-
ered, became known as Miss Mitch-
ell’s comet. A crater on the moon
was named for her, as was a World
War II cargo ship, the S.S. Maria
Mitchell. In 1888, a year before Mitch-
ell died, her brother, oceanographer
Henry Mitchell, helped found the
National Geographic Society.Women: A Century of Change
A YEARLONG SERIESPREVIOUS PHOTOS: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES
(MITCHELL, LINDBERGH, ANABLE); THOMAS J. ABERCROMBIE
(JOHNSON); RICHARD H. STEWART (PUGH); MILO WOODBRIDGE
WILLIAMS (GRIFFIN); AMADO ARAÚZ, COURTESY THE ARAÚZ
COLLECTION (TORRES DE ARAÚZ); JOHN TEE-VAN
(BOSTELMANN); JOSEPH H. BAILEY (THARP)116 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC