Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind

Description

In an era when science was perceived as a male domain, Mary Somerville (1780-1872) became both the leading woman scientist of her day and an integral part of the British scientific community. Her scientific writings contributed to one of the most important cultural projects of Victorian Britain: establishing science as a distinct, integral, and unifying element of culture. By the time of her death, Somerville had achieved near-mythic status in Britain. Her works reflect both the power of science to capture imagination and the influence of cultural factors in the development of science. They provide a window into a particularly lucid and illuminated mind and into one of the most formative periods in the evolution of modern scientific culture. This retelling of Somerville's story focuses on the factors that allowed her to become an eminent scientist and argues for rethinking the story of women's participation in science.

'Kathryn Neeley explores Somerville's unique position: she was accepted as an eminent scientist, but also celebrated for the way she conformed to Victorian norms of womanly behaviour.' The Lancet 'Underneath the now statutory feminist gloss this is a work of great scholarship.' Contemporary Review 'Neeley's study repays careful reading and is a valuable contribution to studies of discourse, writing and gender in nineteenth-century science.' BJHS 'Neeley has provided scholars with an absorbing and definitive intellectual biography of Mary Somerville, arguably the most important woman in science during the nineteenth-century ... In sum, Neeley's book is a welcome addition to the growing bodies of scholarship re-interpreting the role of women in science, examining the relationship between science and literature, and exploring the importance of popular science.' Centauras