Mary was quite neglected educationally until she discovered algebraic symbols in the puzzles of a fashion magazine. She started teaching herself mathematics from some texts her brother's tutor got her. Her parents were unsupportive and tried to discourage her.
When she was 24, she married. Her husband, who was also unsupportive of her studies, died only three years later, leaving her an inheritance which allowed her to be independent. Free from constraints by her parents or husband, she started studying astronomy and Newton's Principia. She corresponded with William Wallace (of "Braveheart" fame), who advised her on building a mathematics library. At age 32, she remarried, this time to a man supportive of her studies. She started conducting experimentation (on magnetism) and writing scholarly books (Mechanism of the Heavens), which were so well received by the scientific community that the Royal Society commissioned a bust of her to place in their Great Hall. After Caroline Herschel, she was the second woman to be elected into the Royal Astronomical Society. King George III gave her a generous pension to employ her as a full time astronomer (equal to that given to William Herschel). She hypothesized the a planet that influenced the orbit of Uranus, which led to the discovery of Neptune. The algebraic concept of the "common variable" has been attributed to her.
She is an astronomer
University of St. Andrews
Women's Bios
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