Mary Somerville (/?s?m?rv?l/; née Fairfax, formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society.
When John Stuart Mill organized a massive petition to Parliament to give women the right to vote, he made sure that the first signature on the petition would be Somerville's.
In 1834 she became the first person to be described in print as a 'scientist'. When she died in 1872, The Morning Post declared in her obituary that "Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science".
Somerville College, a college of the University of Oxford, is named after her, reflecting the virtues of liberalism and academic success which the college wished to embody. She is featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017 along with a quotation from her work On the Connection of the Physical Sciences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville
Did you know the word scientist began as a joke? It first appeared in March 1834, in a book review of Mary Somerville’s On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, one of the earliest works in the popular science genre. The reviewer, William Whewell (writing anonymously), was so captivated by Somerville’s brilliance that he called the book “masterly”—even while expressing surprise that such extraordinary work could have possibly come from a woman.
Somerville’s writing wasn’t just exceptional; it covered topics from astronomy and physics to chemistry and geography, weaving them together with remarkable insight. Her interdisciplinary genius inspired Whewell to coin a playful new term: If an artist creates art, why not call someone who studies science a scientist?
What started as a joke has become a powerful term that defines a field—and Mary Somerville’s pioneering work remains an inspiration.
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