WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 191 



from his youth been an enthusiastic student of astronomy, 

 and that, too, at a time when very little attention was given 

 to its study in this country, and when the observatory of 

 Harvard College consisted of only a little projection to 

 an old mansion in Cambridge, in which there was a small 

 telescope. 



At the age of thirteen little Maria counted seconds by 

 the chronometer for her father while he observed the an- 

 nular eclipse of the sun in 1831; and from that time on 

 she was his assiduous co-worker in the study of the heavens. 

 After teaching school for some years, she became the 

 librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position which she 

 held for nearly twenty years. Here she continued the 

 study of her favorite science, and read all the books on 

 astronomy which she could obtain. It was during this 

 period that she read Bowditch's translation of Laplace's 

 Mecanique Celeste and Gauss's Theoria Motus Corporum 

 Ccelestium in the original. 



On the evening of October 1, 1847, she was the dis- 

 coverer of a comet that attracted great attention because 

 it secured for her a medal offered by the King of Denmark 

 in 1831 for the first one who should discover a telescopic 

 comet. The same comet was observed by Father de Vico 

 in Rome two days subsequently, by Dawes in England on 

 October seventh, and by Madame Riimker, wife of the 

 director of the observatory of Hamburg, on the eleventh 

 of the same month. As there was no Atlantic cable in those 

 days, it was not known who was the fortunate winner of 

 the prize until nearly a year afterward, when word was 

 received from Denmark announcing that the priority of 

 Miss Mitchell's discovery had been recognized and that 

 she would be the recipient of the prize, which, for a while, 

 it was thought would go to De Vico or Madame Riimker. 1 



In 1849 Miss Mitchell was appointed a compiler for the 



i M aria Mitchell, Life, Letters and Journals, compiled by Phebe 

 Mitchell Kendall, p. 267 et seq., Boston, 1896. 



