ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



youth fulness of her manner, and her light and graceful figure, to the 

 end of her life. She was married in 1804 to Mr. Samuel Greig, Rus- 

 sian consular agent in London, who has been credited with encour- 

 aging her scientific tastes, but incorrectly. Her daughter, Martha 

 Somerville, says that " Mr, Greig took no interest in science or litera- 

 ture, and possessed in full the prejudice against learned women which 

 was common at that time." But he did not prevent her from study- 

 ing. After three years of married life she returned, a widow, to her 

 father's house in Burntisland, with two little boys, one of whom died 

 in childhood. With her second husband, Dr. William Somerville, 

 whom she married in 1812, "she foiand sympathy wdth her intellect- 

 ual tastes, and a stimulus to her energy for culture." Nevertheless, 

 his sister had written to her on the first announcement of the en- 

 gagement, expressing the hope that now she would give up her foolish 

 manner of life and studies, and make a respectable and useful wife. 

 Dr. Somerville having been appointed Inspector of the Army Medi- 

 cal Board and Physician to Chelsea Hospital, they removed to London 

 in 1816. Here Mrs. Somerville introduced herself to the scientific 

 world and attracted attention by some exj^eriments on the magnetic 

 influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum, the results of which 

 were published in the "Philosophical Transactions" of 182G. 



In the year following the reading of this paper. Lord Brougham 

 proposed to Mrs. Somerville to write for the series of publications of 

 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge an epitome or 

 popular exposition of Laplace's philosophy, as laid down in his 

 "Mecanique Celeste." Acting upon this suggestion, she composed 

 her "Celestial Mechanics," a work in which, though it is founded on 

 Laplace's treatise, the author did not hesitate to express her own in- 

 dependent oj^inion of the value of the great astronomer's various 

 propositions. The book proved to be too large and elaborate for the 

 library for which it had been primarily intended — or, as Sir John 

 Herschel expressed it, " written for posterity, and not for the class 

 whom the society designed to instruct " — and was published sej)arate- 

 ly, in 1831. It made her famous. The approval which it won, says 

 "Nature "in a leading article, "from the first mathematicians and 

 physicists of the day, seems to have surprised no one more thoroughly 

 than the writer herself, who had carried on her studies with such 

 unostentatious industry within her own home that she was scarcely 

 conscious how exceptional were her attainments." On the recom- 

 mendation of Professors Whewell and Peacock, the " Mechanism of 

 the Heavens " was introduced upon the list of studies prescribed by 

 the University of Cambridge as " essential to those students who as- 

 pire to the highest places in the examinations." 



In 1834 she published "The Connection of the Physical Sciences," 

 a work which was highly praised in the " Quarterly Review," was 

 spoken of by Humboldt as " generally so exact and admirable a trea- 



