Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind

ISBN-13: 9780521622998 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 280 str.

Kathryn A. Neeley (University of Virginia)

Opis

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.

Recenzje

'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

Spis treści

Author's preface; Prologue; Perceiving what others do not perceive: the 'peculiar illumination' of the female mind; 1. Head among the stars, feet firm upon the earth: the problem of categorizing Mary Somerville; 2. Creating a room of her own in the world of science: how Mary Fairfax became the famous Mrs Somerville; 3. Science as exact calculation and elevated meditation: Mechanism of the Heavens (1931), Preliminary Dissertation (1832), and On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834); 4. The earth, the sea, the air, and their inhabitants: Physical Geography (1848) and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869); 5. Personal Recollections (1973): Mary Somerville on Mary Somerville; 6. Memory and Mary Somerville: in the public eye and historical memory; Epilogue: science, voice, and vision.