Maria Mitchell ( ; August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, librarian, naturalist, and educator. In 1847, she discovered a comet named 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) that was later known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet" in her honor. She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Christian VIII of Denmark in 1848. Mitchell was the first internationally known woman to work as both a professional astronomer and a professor of astronomy after accepting a position at Vassar College in 1865. She was also the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mitchell is the namesake of the Maria Mitchell Association, the Maria Mitchell Observatory, and the Maria Mitchell Aquarium.
Early years (1818–1846)
Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Lydia Coleman Mitchell, a library worker, and William Mitchell, a schoolteacher and amateur astronomer. The third of ten children, Mitchell and her siblings were raised in the Quaker religion. Mitchell reportedly showed an early interest and talent in astronomy and mathematics. Her father taught her to operate a number of astronomical instruments including chronometers, sextants, refracting telescopes, and Dolland telescopes. Mitchell often assisted her father in his work with local seamen and in his observations of the night sky.
After attending Elizabeth Gardner small school as a young child, Mitchell enrolled in the North Grammar school, where her father was the first principal. When Maria Mitchell was 11 years old, her father founded his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. In 1831, at the age of 12, Mitchell aided her father in calculating the exact moment of a solar eclipse.|left|352x352px]]
William Mitchell's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies until she was about the age of 16.
In 1836, Mitchell began working as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position she held for 20 years. Historians have limited knowledge about this period in Mitchell's life because few of her personal documents remain from before 1846. Members of the Mitchell family believed she destroyed many of her personal documents in order to keep them private, having witnessed personal papers blown through the street by the Great Fire of 1846, and because fear of another fire persisted.
Discovery of "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (1847–1849)
At 10:50 pm on the night of October 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) using a Dollond refracting telescope with three inches of aperture and forty-six-inch focal length. She had noticed an unknown object flying through the sky in an area where she previously had not noticed any other activity and believed it to be a comet. She published a notice of her discovery in Silliman's Journal in January 1848 under her father's name. The following month, she submitted her calculation of the comet's orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer. The only previous women to discover a comet were the astronomers Caroline Herschel and Maria Margarethe Kirch.
Mitchell's medal was inscribed with line 257 of Book I of Virgil's Georgics: "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" (Not in vain do we watch the setting and the rising [of the stars]). Though the award was sent via letter in 1848, Mitchell did not physically receive the award in Nantucket until March 1849. She became the first American to receive this medal and the first woman to receive an award in astronomy. At her home on Nantucket, she entertained a number of prominent academics such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth. In 1849, Mitchell accepted a computing and field research position for the U.S. Coast Survey undertaken at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office.
Professorship at Vassar College (1865–1888)
upright|thumb|Maria Mitchell (seated) inside the dome of the [[Vassar College Observatory, with her student Mary Watson Whitney (standing), circa 1877|left]]
Though Mitchell did not have a college education, she was appointed professor of astronomy at Vassar College by its founder, Matthew Vassar, in 1865, and became the first female professor of astronomy. Columbia University, and Rutgers Female College.
Mitchell employed many unconventional teaching methods in her classes. She reported neither grades nor absences, advocated for small classes and individualized attention, and incorporated technology and mathematics into her lessons.
Mitchell's research interests were varied. She photographed planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, as well as their moons, and studied nebulae, double stars, and solar eclipses. She taught at the college until her retirement in 1888, one year before her death.
Social activism
In 1841, Mitchell attended the anti-slavery convention in Nantucket where Frederick Douglass made his first speech, and she also became involved in the anti-slavery movement by boycotting clothes made of Southern cotton. She also called attention to the place for women in science and mathematics and encouraged others to support women's colleges and women's campaigns to serve on local school boards. The Maria Mitchell Association was established to promote the sciences on Nantucket and preserve the legacy of Mitchell's work.
In 1989, Mitchell was named a National Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Her unique place at the intersection of American science and culture has been captured in a number of recent publications.
Publications
During her life, Mitchell published seven items in the Royal Society Catalog and three articles detailing her observations in Silliman's Journal.