190 ;WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



into a state of insensibility which soon terminated in death. 

 With Miss Herschel the case was different. Although in 

 her ninety-seventh year, she still retained possession of all 

 her faculties and was fully able to appreciate the volume 

 which told of the crowning of her brother's life work a 

 volume which must have given her additional satisfaction 

 when she recalled her fifty years of loyal service at her 

 brother's side as his associate and ministering angel in the 

 greatest work ever undertaken by a single man in the his- 

 tory of astronomy. 



Caroline Herschel died at the advanced age of ninety- 

 seven years and ten months, retaining to the last her inter- 

 est in astronomy which had occupied her mind for more 

 than three-quarters of a century. 



Her epitaph, composed by herself, is engraved on a heavy 

 stone slab which covers her grave and contains the follow- 

 ing words: "The eyes of her who is glorified were here 

 below turned to the starry heavens. Her own discoveries 

 of comets and her participation in the immortal labors of 

 her brother, William Herschel, bear witness of this to 

 future ages." 



Space precludes any extended reference to Miss Her- 

 schel's distinguished associate in the Royal Astronomical 

 Society, Mrs. Somerville, whose masterly translation and 

 exposition of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste secured for her 

 so enviable a place among the mathematicians of her time, 

 and placed all English students of mathematical astronomy 

 under such deep obligations. It is true that she ever mani- 

 fested a lively interest in celestial phenomena; but it is 

 rather as a mathematician than as an astronomer that she 

 will be remembered by the devotees of science. 



The first American woman to win distinction in astron- 

 omy was Miss Maria Mitchell. Born in the island of Nan- 

 tucket in 1818, she, at an early age, displayed remarkable 

 talent for astronomy and mathematics. Her first instructor 

 was her father, who, besides being a school teacher, had 



