Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell


Maria Mitchell, the first professor hired for the nascent Vassar College, was sought by Matthew Vassar to lend luster to Vassar's nine-member faculty. Mitchell (1818-1889) had already gained a world reputation in astronomy when, while "sweeping" the skies of Nantucket with a telescope in 1847, she had been the first person to discover a "telescopic" comet, one too distant to be seen with the naked eye. The comet was subsequently named for her. For her discovery she was awarded a gold medal by the King of Denmark, who had offered a prize for such an identification. In 1848 she was elected into membership of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston.

Mitchell and her father, also a self-made astronomer, moved into the Vassar Observatory, the first building of the college to be completed, in the summer of 1865, and the college opened that Fall. Mitchell's observatory was equipped with a 12-inch telescope designed by Henry Fitz. Her students did original research and studied the heavens from the dome at the top of the observatory. Breaking any conventions that her astronomy students had previously had about nocturnal behavior, her classes were aroused from their sleep in their bedrooms in Main Building and made their way over to the observatory in the dark to ascend to the dome, or the roof of the building, and study Jupiter or Saturn (Mitchell's two favorite planets, according to her successor, Mary Whitney).

Mitchell published the findings of her students along with her own, somtimes in Silliman's Journal, the pioneering American scientific journal established at Yale in 1818 by Benjamin Silliman, and on other occasions in the Poughkeepsie newspaper. She constructed an apparatus for making photographs of the sun and preserved the plate of the photographs in a closet in the observatory--where they were recently rediscovered during a housecleaning, in place, and labelled in her own handwriting. Her students used the Morse telegraphy instrument invented and given to them by Samuel F. B. Morse, a neighbor of the college and one of its original trustees.

In 1869 Mitchell travelled with seven of her students to Burlington, Iowa, to see a total eclipse of the sun. As was later observed in The Great Experiment, A Chronicle of Vassar History, "the students' observations were printed in the official report of Professor J.H.C. Coffin, Superintendent of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, who directed the various observers of the eclipse." Under Mitchell's tutelage, these students, after just two or three years of scientific study at Vassar,were accurately recording their observations in a joint experiment that would reach a national scientific audience. At a time when men's colleges seldom engaged science students with direct field experience of this kind, her students were entering the new era of learning for women envisioned by the founder; Subsequently, on July 28, 1878, Mitchell and five of her students were the official observers of an eclipse near the Indian territory in Denver, Colorado.

Maria Mitchell poses with the first Astronomy class at Vassar College

Maria Mitchell poses with the first Astronomy class at Vassar College

Mitchell used her observatory dome not only for the study of science, but also as a gathering place for the discussion of politics and women's issues. On May 10, 1875, Julia Ward Howe, Maria Mitchell's guest (and composer of the Civil War anthem "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") lectured in the observatory on "Is Polite Society Polite?" One of Mitchell's popular traditions was her annual "dome party," which took place for the first time on June 16, 1870. On that occasion Mitchell introduced a game in which everyone took turns in writing poems on scraps of recycled paper. One poem that day was composed by Mitchell and addressed to Mary Mineah, an undergraduate student, on her 24th birthday. Another poem ran:

Some rhymes are fitted by Eleanor Clark

Pleasing words like lark and park,

But such rhymes as Bark and Cark

These are not for Eleanor Clark,

and,

Some rhymes are fitted to Eleanor Peirce

Pleasing words like nurse and verse

But such words as curse and worse

These are not for Eleanor Peirce.

In June 1883 these verses were arranged to imitate the words of Auld Lang Syne:

Should Patty Hillard be forgot, In Vassar's sacred hall?

Oh! Vassar girls, abhor the thought

While Vassar lives at all.

For Vassar's sake we sing

For Vassar dear.

Or,

While Saturn's ring is poised aright

And Saturn's moons still glow

The five who watched them many a night

Will not from memory go. "Annie Laurie," "Captain Jencks of the Horse Marines," "Araby's Daughter," "Maid of Athens," and "The Light Guitar" all lent themselves similarly to such occasions.

Three of Mitchell's students were named in American Men of Science for 1906: Antonia Maury, VC 1887; Professor Mary Whitney, VC 1868, MA. 1872; Dr, Christine Ladd Franklin, VC 1869 (who was the only woman ever to get an honorary degree from Vassar and who went on to get a PhD from Johns Hopkins). Mitchell became very much involved in early women's suffrage organizations and while president held meetings in the Vassar dome attended by well known suffragists. After twenty-eight years at Vassar, at the end of her career, she returned to Lynn, Massachusetts and lived for only one more year.

In Matthew Vassar's Communications to the Board of Trustees before his death he said: "Let the foremost woman of our land be among the most advanced and honored pilots and guardians of coming woman, and I cheerfully leave my name to be associated with the result." And so it was, and still is.

Related Articles

Maria Mitchell and Women's Rights

Maria Mitchell Observatory

Maria Mitchell Salary Dispute

Maria Mitchell's Living Legacy

The Maria Mitchell Association

Original Faculty

External Links

Sources

The Maria Mitchell Collection, Vassar College Archives

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals. Compiled by Phebe Mitchell Kendall, Boston, Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1896.

"We Are Women Studying Together," A Videotape by James Steerman and Elizabeth Daniels, Vassar College Archives.

Henry Albers, Maria Mitchell, A Life in Journals and Letters, Henry Albers, ed. College Avenue Press, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 2001.

EAD, 2005