Book description
Edited and introduced by Dorothy McMillan. Born in Jedburgh in 1780,
Mary Fairfax was the daughter of one of Nelson's captains, and in common
with most girls of her time and station she was given the kind of
education which prizes gentility over ability. Nevertheless, she taught
herself algebra in secret, and made her reputation in celestial
mechanics with her 1831 translation of Laplace's Mécanique céleste as
The Mechanism of the Heavens. As she was equally interested in art,
literature and nature Somerville's lively memoirs give a fascinating
picture of her life and times from childhood in Burntisland to
international recognition and retirement in Naples. She tells of her
friendship with Maria Edgeworth and of her encounters with Scott and
Fenimore Cooper. She remembers comets and eclipses, high society in
London and Paris, Charles Babbage and his calculating engine, the
Risorgimento in Italy and the eruption of Vesuvius. Selected by her
daughter and first published in 1973, these are the memoirs of a
remarkable woman who became one of the most gifted mathematicians and
scientists of the nineteenth century. Oxford's Somerville College was
named after her, and the present volume, re-edited by Dorothy McMillan,
draws on manuscripts owned by the college and offers the first
unexpurgated edition of these revelatory writings.
