158 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



When she was about fifteen years old, the future Mrs. 

 Somerville received her first introduction to mathematics; 

 and then, strange to say, it was through a fashion maga- 

 zine. At the end of a page of this magazine, "I read," 

 writes Mrs. Somerville, ' ' what appeared to me to be simply 

 an arithmetical question; but in turning the page I was 

 surprised to see strange-looking lines mixed with letters, 

 chiefly X's and Y's, and asked 'What is that?' " She was 

 told it was a kind of arithmetic, called algebra. 



Her interest was at once aroused; and she resolved 

 forthwith to seek information regarding the curious lines 

 and letters which had so excited her curiosity. "Unfortu- 

 nately," she tells us, "none of our acquaintances or rela- 

 tives knew anything of science or natural history ; nor, had 

 they done so, should I have had courage to ask of them a 

 question, for I should have been laughed at. ' ' 



Finally she was able to secure a copy of a work on alge- 

 bra and a Euclid. Although without a teacher she imme- 

 diately applied herself to master the contents of these two 

 works, but she had to do so by stealth in bed after she had 

 retired for the night. When her father learned of what 

 was going on, he said to the girl 's mother, l i Peg, we must 

 put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a straight- 

 jacket one of these days." The mother, who had no more 

 sympathy with her daughter's scientific pursuits than had 

 the father, and, fully convinced, like the great majority of 

 her sex, that woman's duties should be confined to the af- 

 fairs of the household, strove to divert her daughter's mind 

 from her "unladylike" pursuits. But her efforts were in- 

 effectual. The young woman, in spite of all obstacles and 

 opposition, contrived to continue her cherished studies; 

 and, through her uncle, the Rev. Dr. Somerville, afterward 

 her father-in-law, she was able to become proficient in both 

 Latin and Greek. When she was thirty-three years of age 

 she became the happy possessor of a small library of mathe- 

 matical works. "I had now," she writes, "the means, and 



