Thursday, August 1, 2013

Maria Mitchell - 1st female professional Astronomer

Ok, so you know when you go onto Google and you have to sign in and they have interesting little Google signs that change with peoples birthdays or holidays...well, I found this when I went to sign on this morning and thought it was interesting so I'm sharing it. :-)
have a great day all!!

Maria Mitchell (seated) inside the dome of the Vassar College Observatory 
                                                                                                                                                               
Maria Mitchell (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) (pron: ma-RY-ah) was an American astronomer, who in 1847, by using a telescope, discovered a comet which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet". She won a gold medal prize for her discovery which was presented to her by King Frederick VII of Denmark. The medal said “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars”. Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.

Maria Mitchell was born in NantucketMassachusetts. She was a first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin.[5] She had nine brothers and sisters. Her parents, William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell, were Quakers. Maria Mitchell was born into a community unusual for its time in regard to equality for women. Her parents, like other Quakers, valued education and insisted on giving her the same quality of education that boys received. One of the tenets of the Quaker religion was intellectual equality between the sexes. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months and sometimes years to manage affairs while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women who called the island home.


She is also known for her famous quotation, "We have a hunger of the mind. We ask for all of the knowledge around us and the more we get, the more we desire.


The above has been gathered from Wikipedia





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