This painting of a young woman looking through a telescope is by Pietro Rotari, an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He was born in Verona. His career took him from place and he died in 1762 at the age of 55 in St Petersburg where he had traveled to paint for the Russian court.
He painted mostly women–some famous and his work was noted for its realism and beauty. His art is showcased on this site. This one struck me, though, because it is of a woman who is expressing and interest in science, specifically, astronomy. During Rotari’s lifetime, there were notable women astronomers such as Maria Margaretha Kirch, a German who believed that she deserved an education equivalent to that given to young boys in her time.
At an early age, she showed an interest in astronomy and seized the opportunity to study with Christoph Arnold, a self-taught astronomer who worked as a farmer in Sommerfeld, near Leipzig. She became his unofficial apprentice and later his assistant, living with him and his family. She married the famous German astronomer and mathematician, Gottfried Kirch.
Maria was the first woman to discover a comet yet the Academy which she had made dedicated two decades of her life making it one of the foremost centres of astronomy, abandoned her after her husband died. The academy turned down her request for her son to be appointed astronomer and that she be only his assistant. The institute was reluctant to set a precedent and feared ridicule from other institutions. Maria spent 18 months petitioning the royal court for the position but received a final rejection in 1712. Bitterly disappointed, she wrote in the preface to one of her publications that a woman could become “as skilled as a man at observing and understanding the skies”.
However, despite the disappointments she encountered in her career, her publications drew the recognition she deserved. They included her observations on the Aurora Borealis (1707), a pamphlet on the conjunction of the sun with Saturn and Venus (1709), and a pamphlet in which she predicted a new comet (1711).
Nicole-Reine Lepaute was a French astronomer and Mathematician. Her father was a valet for Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, the wife of Louis I of Spain. Nicole was described as precocious and intelligent, being mostly self taught who stayed up all night “devouring” books and read every book in the library. She married Jean-André Lepaute, a royal clockmaker in the Luxembourg Palace.
At her suggestion and together with Jean-André, constructed a clock with an astronomical function. The clock was presented to the French Academy of Science in 1753, where it was inspected and approved by Jérôme Lalande, the same man who once said of Nicole, that even as a child “she had too much spirit not to be curious” She later worked on a book with him and her husband although she didn’t receive authorship.
Lalande recommended that she and along with mathematician, French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist, Alexis Clairault calculate both the predicted return of Halley’s Comet and the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn of the Halley’s comet. In November 1758, the team presented their conclusion that the comet would arrive on 13 April 1759. The actual arrival of the comet was 13 March 1759. Not bad for a prediction and as a result of their calculations, that was the first time scientists had successfully predicted when the comet would cross the point of the comet orbit closest to the Sun.
Sadly, Clairault didn’t recognize Nicole did not recognize her work at all in his work which greatly upset Lalande. He considered her the “most distinguished female French astronomer ever.” He acknowledged her help in an article. Good for him.
Nicole was again a part of Lalande’s team. This time she worked with him to calculate the ephemeris of the transit of Venus. While it is not recorded what her contribution to this project was, in 1761, she she was acknowledged by being inducted as an honorary member of the distinguished Scientific Academy of Béziers. The pair collaborated for fifteen years on the Academy of Science’s annual guides for astronomers and navigators by developing ephemerides: tables that predict the location of the stars on each day of the year.
After her death, Lalande wrote about her contributions to astronomy. In 1762, Lepaute calculated the exact time of a solar eclipse which occurred on 1 April 1764 and wrote an article in which she gave a map of the eclipse’s extent in 15-minute intervals across Europe and predicted the time and percentage each are in Europe would experience. And for the years 1774-1784, she calculated the ephemeris of the Sun, the Moon and the planets.
Both Maria Margaretha Kirch and Nicole-Reine Lepaute contributed greatly to science and has made it possible for women of all ages, color, nationalities to follow in their footsteps. Today, we want to take this time to recognize them for their groundbreaking work and give them the credit they deserve.
Sources: The Woman Gallery; Wikipedia; Epigenesys; Encyclopedia; AstroChix
Notes to Women 