June 30, 2014 • 30 mins
Herschel managed to break the barrier of women in scientific fields far earlier than you might suspect, in part because of her association with her brother, and in equal measure due to her steadfast dedication to her work. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh, and
today is for me a whoa Astronomy Day because I
(00:21):
love astronomy. I love talking about space and all things astronomical,
So it's a special in my wheelhouse one. But also, uh,
we're talking about a woman astronomer who really managed to
break the barrier of women in scientific fields way earlier
than you might anticipate. Uh, in part because she was
working alongside her brother and that sort of gave her
(00:43):
entree into the world of science and astronomy and an
equal measure though it was due to her really steadfast
dedication to her work. She was a very no nonsense
woman and completely focused. Uh. And as a consequence, she
had achieved a great deal. So we're talking about Caroline
Lucretia Herschel, who was born on March sixteenth of seventeen
(01:05):
fifty and she was born in Hanover, Germany. Her parents
were Anna ills Mortzen and Isaac Herschel, and when Caroline
was born, the Herschels were already in their eighteenth year
of marriage, so they had already had a pretty large family.
They ended up having a total of ten children, and
Caroline was the eighth of them, although four of their
children did not live pastorally childhood, and according to family records,
(01:28):
the Herschel family line had actually come from Moravia, where
they left due to their Protestant beliefs and ended up
settling in Saxony. Isaac was a musician and he played
in a military regiment. He educated his sons in music
whenever he was home, and it was during these lessons
that Caroline's older brother, Williams, started to show some natural
(01:50):
gifts for music. He was not only musically talented, but
he was also extremely smart and very quick to learn
in other areas of study. Also, Yeah, and one thing
I feel like I should point out I didn't include
it in the notes when I said that he was
Isaac was able to educate his children when he was home.
Be a military musician in this context is not uh
(02:14):
as much of an easy ride as you may think.
These men had to travel with the troops, They were
in the trenches with the troops. They were really part
of a functioning, active military. It wasn't like they just
showed up to play trumpet before things happened, so he
really was traveling a lot. And while William was urged
(02:34):
into a musical career because of his natural proclivity that
exhibited itself very early on, Caroline really felt when she
looked back at their childhood. She mentions it in her
memoirs and in letters that if he had been allowed
to pursue other interests other than music, his genius and
astronomy really would have been revealed much earlier. And in
her memoirs she mentions that while her father, Isaac was
(02:58):
indeed devoted to music, he too was also interested in
the stars. And here's a quick excerpt from one of
her memories from childhood. She says, my father was a
great admirer of astronomy and had some knowledge of that science.
For I remember his taking me on a clear, frosty
night into the street to make me acquainted with several
of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing
(03:19):
at a comment which was then visible. And I well
remember with what delight he used to assist my brother
William in his various contrivances in the pursuit of his
philosophical studies. Among which was a neatly turned four inch
globe upon which the equator and ecliptic were engraved by
my brother. Caroline was also very attached to her brother William,
(03:40):
who was twelve years older than she was, from the
time she was really very young. Yeah. She speaks of
him so lovingly and with great adoration. Uh in her memoirs.
It's it's easy for me to identify with because my
siblings are all much older than me, and I look
at them in prettating my oldest sister almost as a
parent figure. In it's a very similar relationship that she
(04:01):
had with William, especially because Isaac traveled so much. Uh.
And while Isaac wanted his children to learn music and
French and philosophy, particularly all of his children, his wife
UH and I had a really much more strict and
sensible path in mind for Caroline. When she was quite young,
it became Caroline's job to knit all of the socks
(04:22):
and stockings for her brothers, and as the male siblings
of the family pursued their musical careers, Caroline learned how
to care for a home. She really did not get
the benefit of kind of the more philosophical education in
seventeen sixty one, Caroline got really severe typhus fever and
it nearly killed her. Even after she got better, it
(04:44):
took a really long time for her to regain her strength,
and she recounted having to crawl up and downstairs on
all fours for months because she was too weak to
walk up and down them. Uh So this illness also
pretty significantly stunted Caroline's growth. She was really diminutive even
when she was in her adulthood and not growing anymore.
(05:05):
She was less than five ft tall. Uh And you know,
it left her not particularly pleasing to the eye in
their opinion, And so her parents sort of came to
this conclusion that she was never really going to have
any marriage prospects, and so she should hope for a
career as a scullery made like that. That was they
were trying to be very practical. It sounds really rough
for a parent to do, particularly and to the modern era,
(05:27):
where you know, children are encouraged to really follow their
dreams and pursue their heart's desires. Um. But in this instance,
this meant that Caroline's mother, Anna basically doubled down on
her insistence that her daughter really needed to stick to
learning useful skills and leave the life of the mind
to her brothers. In the early seventeen sixties, Caroline's brother
(05:48):
William traveled to England to pursue work as a music
teacher in organist after he deserted his position with the
Hannovarian Guards. Even while he spent time in various town
was traveling far away people, the family was really hoping
that he would come back to Hanover to settle down,
and he didn't make an appearance back in Germany in
(06:09):
seventeen sixty four, but it was really more than anything else,
just to tell the family that he was not coming
back to live. He was moving to England permanently, and
Caroline's memoir details this is a time of joyful reunion,
but also sadness that she was too busy with scullery work,
uh and with her first communion to really see him,
(06:29):
and this bittersweet knowledge that they all shared that it
would likely be quite some time before anyone in the
family was going to see him again. And in this
particular part of her memoir, she is really extremely clear
and does not hide the fact that he is her
very favorite brother. She calls him her dearest brother. So
when William left, and as we mentioned, it conflicted with
(06:53):
her first communion, she was really heartbroken that her goodbye
was cut short, and so she wrote this about his departure.
It's a fact on my shattered nerves. I will not
attempt to describe nor what I felt. For days and
weeks after. I wish it were possible to say what
I wished to say without feeling a new that feverish
(07:13):
wretchedness which accompanied my walk in the afternoon with some
of my school companions, and my black silk dress and
bouquet of artificial flowers, the same which had served my
sister on her bridal day. I could think of nothing
that on my return I should find nobody but my
disconsolate father and mother. So sad uh. She really just
(07:33):
adored her brother, and you know, he was like a
ray of sunshine when he came home, and knowing that
he was gone really broke her heart. And the following August,
their father, Isaac, had a seizure which left his right
side almost entirely paralyzed, and so his inability to play
or teach music at the level that he once had,
which had been his great joy, and the various problems
(07:55):
several of his children were having in their lives. You know. Again,
Caroline was one of many, and there were a number
of struggles happening in the family and the fact that
he had kind of as a consequence of being uh,
left with this paralysis. He couldn't do this thing that
they had been doing, which was teaching Caroline on the
slide from her mother. Uh. You know, when her mother
(08:16):
was not around, he would secretly be like, common, will
teach you a little bit of music. Uh, And they
just couldn't pull that off anymore with his infirm state,
and all of this sort of conspired to leave this
once boisterous man really quite depressed and suffering in his
final several years. He ended up dying on March seventeen
sixty seven. While her father's attempts to offer her instruction
(08:39):
were cut short, Caroline did get some lessons from the
daughter of a family who lived in the same house
as rehearsals. When she was a teenager, her friend died
of consumption, which shut yet another door for education for Caroline,
and she just really abhorred the thought of life as
a maid. She really really wanted intellectual and creative emulation,
(09:01):
So she was trying to figure out how she could
get a slightly higher position like that of a governess quote,
where the want of a knowledge of French would be
no objection. Yeah, she knew she was not stupid and
that she was fairly bright, but that she hadn't had
all the educational opportunities that would really prepare her for
a much better position than I made. But she was
(09:22):
just trying to think sort of practically about Okay, what
could I do that's better than this? Uh, And she
did at one point managed to convince her mother and
her brother's after her father had died, that she should
be sent for a short time to a school to
learn millinary and sewing, and she describes this as a
very happy time, although her brothers were very clear that
(09:43):
they were sending her just so she could make things
for herself, that this was not going to be a
professional um stepping stone at all. Once she returned home, however,
from this short time away where she was learning new
things and meeting new people, she really just fell back
into the same patterns of you know, constant chores and
schedule and drudgery that she so despised. That changed when
(10:06):
the family got a letter from William in the fall
of seventeen seventy one. In this letter, he proposed that
Caroline come to live with him and service as housekeeper
and also as a singer to accompany him in concerts.
He proposed a two year trial and said that if
it didn't work out, he would send her back. And
Caroline was so super excited by this prospect that even
(10:30):
before it was all approved by her mother and the
rest of the family, she started to practice singing in
secret um so that William had actually asked another of
their brothers who was musically skilled, to tutor her. But
there were some siblings skirmishes that really made that fall apart.
Her brother kind of made fun of her and she
didn't like it, so she just practiced on her own.
(10:52):
And she also just in trying to lay the groundwork
so that they would have no excuse to keep her.
She knitted enough box and stocking so the whole family
would be covered for at least two years. She was
really trying to make it as easy as possible to
make her case to go. In the end, when William
went to Germany to get Caroline, he also gave their
(11:13):
mother a small annuity which she could use to hire
some help to replace Caroline's work around the house. Yeah,
I mean they were in effect losing a maid as well.
So I feel though, like I should note that while
Caroline really hated the idea of being a maid, she
didn't seem to hate her mother. Um and this could
just be one of those cases of wording, but when
(11:35):
she talks about leaving Hanover, she refers to her as
her dear mother and the difficulty of leaving her. So
I think she did love her mother and and have
you know, positive feelings for her as much as she
sort of hated the ideas that her mother had for
her life. So Caroline and Williams set out for England together,
(11:55):
and in Caroline's uh memoirs, she describes this trip at
great length and with lots of details, and she talks
about all the stages of the journey and all the
trials and discomfort that they often encountered because travel was
extremely difficult. Um. William's journal, on the other hand, just
says August sixteen, seventeen seventy two, set off on my
(12:16):
return to England and company with my sister. That just
cracked me up when I found it in her in
her memoir, it was it's so funny, So what's Caroline
and William got to England. Caroline did indeed, learned to
sing and she developed her soprano voice so she could
accompany her organist brother and performances. She also took two
(12:36):
or three lessons a day from her brother, because remember
at this point he was pretty successful music teacher. But
that was not the only thing that William was up
to in Bath. While he was successful in music, he'd
already turned his interest to science. He had astronomy students
as well as music students, and he had been writing
scientific papers for the Bath Philosophical Society. Uh, there's part
(12:59):
of me that unders if this is not why he
was like, I'm never coming back to Germany, Like he
knew he would be kind of locked into the music
career there, and he had already started to toy with
this really significant career change. And Caroline arrived in the
midst of William kind of making this transition in his life.
And so for her, going from a life of repetition
(13:20):
and predictability and menial duties to one of assisting her
whirlwind brother was a huge change. For this woman who
was only twenty two at the time, so she was
suddenly responsible for the budget of the household and taking
care of trips to the market. And she performed with
her brother as a featured singer often, and she apparently
also had a lot of arguments with her brother's hired servant.
(13:41):
She does not speak very well of that woman in
her letters her memoirs. She was also initially pretty homesick.
Her English wasn't good enough to bond with anyone else
in Bath, and her brother was incredibly busy. Her sister
had been left a widow with six children, and Caroline
also felt badly the there wasn't anything she could do
to help. But on the upside, you know, while she
(14:05):
is in this whirlwind, crazy world, the learning that she
had yearned for back in Germany but had been denied
was certainly abundant in England. She was mentally stimulated at
all times. She had to learn the bookkeeping, as we
were saying, she was learning English as quickly as she
could uh, and she had to learn a lot more
about music in pretty short order. And in some ways
(14:27):
this isolation of this transition and her homesickness really likely
bonded her to William more than ever, although she really
didn't get as much of his time and attention as
she wished because he had so many students to see
in addition to his extracurricular studies in astronomy. She was
making a really good name for herself as a singer,
though she was even approached by other music companies to
(14:50):
perform with them, but she declined, saying that she really
needed to stay with her brother and his work. And
as William turned his attention progressively more and more to
a strong to me, Caroline followed suit. Uh, she assisted
her brother in the assembling of telescopes and analyzing the heavens,
and we could do a whole podcast just about William
(15:10):
and sort of how his music to astronomy transition happened.
So I don't want people to think I'm just leaving
that out, but Caroline's really the focus here. But while
she's doing all of this and helping him assemble things
and polishing lenses and mirrors, she ended up learning a
great deal about astronomy herself. William is credited with discovering
Uranus in one while he was actually searching for double stars. Incidentally,
(15:33):
the planet was initially named George or the Georgian Star,
after the King of England, which sounds a lot more
majestic than just calling a star George. As a return
for his work, William Herschel was innighted and appointed to
the position of court Astronomer for King George the Third.
And this new appointment meant that the Herschels had to
(15:54):
move closer to Windsor Castle. And while he was making
less money as the royal astronomer than he had as
a music shin and teacher, uh William Herschel was now
making enough that he didn't have to kind of have
this double career situation, so he could focus entirely on
his scientific endeavors. And William used this new position to
build a bigger telescope and he launched a long term
(16:16):
survey of the sky that would turn into a project
that really ran two decades. And initially, as he would
observe heavenly bodies through his telescope, he was up on
this ladder and he would call them out to Caroline,
who would be down on the ground, and she would
carefully record everything that he said, so he really trusted
her to keep track of everything that they were witnessing
(16:37):
and identifying. As their list got bigger and became more detailed,
took on the name New General Catalog. This name persists
in codified for him today, as the many astronomical objects
are still identified by their NGC number. And William also
gave Caroline her own what he called her quote seven
foot Newtonian sweeper, and this was a telescope that she
(17:01):
would often use to observe the night sky, uh just
on her own or when she was filling in for
William while he was traveling, so that they wouldn't have
any gaps in their project. On February three, she identified
an open cluster which is on the record as n
g C sixty. The same year, she observed and recorded
(17:22):
n GC to fifty three, also known as the Sculptor Galaxy.
And one of her claims to fame is that she
was the first woman credited with discovering a comet. So
on August one and again on following nights of seventeen six,
she saw an object that was moving across the night
sky and she identified it as a comet, and she
(17:45):
immediately sent word by mail to all of their fellow
astronomers about her discovery in the hopes that they too
would study it. She wanted to share this information as
rapidly as possible. After the comment discovery, William, who was
the King's astronomer, lobbied for his assistant Caroline to be
paid for her work. This made her the first woman
(18:05):
to actually be paid as a professional scientist in Great Britain,
and she would go on to discover a total of
eight comments uh in a little longer than the decade
following that first comet identification. And this was all happening
during a sort of comic craze that was happening in
post enlightenment Georgian England. So it gave Caroline a certain
(18:26):
degree of celebrity, although as a woman astronomer, which was
you know, certainly an odd duck for the times, she
was sometimes lampooned in comics, just as she was also
being lauded as something of a visionary. In seventeen eighty six,
Williams started courting a wealthy widow neighbor, Mary Bernie Pitt.
When when William married her in seventeen eighty eight, his
(18:48):
partnership with Caroline changed really considerably and became somewhat strained uh,
the household duties that Caroline had been taking care of
all of this time were pasted to William's bride, and
the sister was then freed up to pursue her astronomy
work full time. And this certainly sounds like a good thing.
She was likely much more passionate about the astronomy, but
(19:09):
the loss of control and her sense of place in
her brother's life really affected Caroline quite deeply. After sixteen
years living and working with William, Caroline moved to her
own lodgings and she started having to go to his
place to work. She no longer had keys to the
home or to the observatory, and we actually don't know
(19:30):
exactly what Caroline's feelings were at this time. There is
actually a ten year gap in her personal journals from
sevent to sevent those documents were destroyed. There are journals
with ripped out pages. Um When her personal notes and
narratives start up again near the end of the century,
she speaks of her sister in law, who by all
accounts was a really gentle and amiable woman. Everyone really
(19:54):
liked her with a great deal of kindness, and the
two did eventually become very close, but I think it
was a rough ride for those ten years. She probably
wrote some things down she did not want to be
kept on record. Those ten years were still spent working
both with her brother and on her own, and this
was in Caroline was discovering her many comments, and she
(20:14):
was keeping records of her work. The seven comments which
followed the first were observed and identified in December seventeen
eighty eight, January seventeen ninety, April seventeen nine, December seventeen,
October seventeen two, November seventeen and August seventeen ninety seven.
(20:36):
And the first Royal Astronomer of England, who was named
John Flamsteed, had compiled an existing star catalog in the
late sixteen hundreds in early seventeen hundreds, and so in
addition to using this new free time that Caroline had
at her disposal after her brother's marriage to search for comments,
she also used it to cross index the Flamsteed catalog
(20:58):
with the data that she William had compiled, and she
was able to add more than five hundred additional stars
to the existing record as a consequence. William died in
eighteen twenty two, and after her brother was gone, Caroline
went back to Germany where she continued her work entirely
on her own. So on her own after William's death,
and also working with her nephew, who was also an astronomer,
(21:22):
Caroline cataloged nebulae along with her brother. Caroline was instrumental
in expanding the number of known star clusters from one
hundred to two thousand, five hundred and those are rough numbers.
It's you know, more than that. But she went on
to get many many accolades uh as she aged. She
(21:43):
won a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in
eighteen twenty eight for her work in nebulae. In eighteen
thirty two, the King of Denmark honored her with the
medal for her work. She was made an honorary member
of the Royal Society in eighteen thirty five, and she
actually shared the honor of being the first woman to
be named an honorary member of the Society with Mary Somerville,
(22:06):
who also worked in astronomy, and she was also given
this honorary membership the same year. In eighteen thirty eight,
she was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
In eighteen forty six, she was given the Gold Medal
for Science by the King of Prussia. Caroline wrote her
last entry in her day book in September of eighteen
(22:27):
forty five, and in the winter of eighteen forty eight
forty eight, Caroline became ill as the cold of the
season swept in. She initially refused a neighbor friend's offer
to move to her bed to a warmer room than
it existed in and she was already an elderly woman
and somewhat freel at this point, and as a consequence of,
you know, staying in this cold with a compromised immune
(22:50):
system already, she just got sicker and sicker. She did
eventually allow them to move her bed, and while she
rallied now and again, she never really recovered. Her spirit
remained until the end, though, and in a letter from
the same bed moving friend to Caroline's nephew John, it's
reported that when a male friend sent his love and
hopes that Caroline would soon be well enough for him
(23:12):
to visit and give her a kiss, as he had
on her previous birthday, she replied by saying, tell the
general that I have not tasted anything I liked so well.
I just love that she kind of was a little flirty,
even at the very end. It was very sweet. Uh.
And the letter in which that story was relayed to
John was dated January six, and Caroline died just three
(23:35):
days later on January nine. She was ninety seven at
the time. A letter written by Caroline's niece to a
cousin reads, I felt almost a sense of joyful relief
at the death of my aunt, and the thought that
now the unquiet heart was at rest. All that she
had of love to give was concentrated on her beloved brother.
At his death, she felt herself alone. And Caroline wrote
(24:00):
her own tombstone inscription, and it reads, the eyes of
her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens.
She had very pragmatically made all of the arrangements for
her burial uh and her funeral years before her death,
so when she passed it was basically like, Nope, everything's
taken care of already, because she didn't want to burden
(24:20):
her nephew or any of her other relatives with dealing
with it. She also wrote, I am nothing, I have nothing.
All I am all I know I owe to my brother.
I am only the tool, which he shaped to his use.
A well trained puppy dog would have done as much.
So some people interpret this as devotion to a sibling,
and others have read it read it almost as resentful
(24:43):
the words of a woman who's bound by obligation to
do this because her brother was her benefactor and told
her to. But given her obvious love for astronomy and
the work they did together, it seems more in line
with the thinking of someone who wishes to brush away
praise and credit and instead becus the spotlight on someone else. Yeah,
(25:03):
she seemed generally uncomfortable with kind of talking about herself
in any sort of personal way, or you know, with accolades.
She was always very quick to kind of shrug them off.
There's a really lovely intro written in her memoir and
about her, and it says her own recollections go back
to the great earthquake of Lisbon. She lived through the
(25:25):
American War, the Old French Revolution, the rise and fall
of Napoleon, and all manner of lesser events and wars.
She saw all the improvements and inventions from the lumbering
post wagon in which she made her first journey from
Hanover to the railroads and electric telegraphs, which have intersected
all Europe. For she lived well down into the reign
of Victoria, but her work of minding the heavens with
(25:47):
her brother engrossed all her thoughts, and she scarcely mentions
any public events. Several comments are named after her, including
Herschel rigole as a lunar creator see Herschel, and an
asteroid called Lucretia, which is her middle name. One of
Williams's telescopes is on display at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago,
(26:08):
and another is on display at Cambridge, and there are
several other pieces of telescopes um at various observatories and
museums throughout the world. The Herschel Museum of Astronomy now
stands at nineteen New King Street and Bath and that
is where William and Caroline lived together. And I would
love to go visit, said Tracy. Let's do that. So yeah,
(26:30):
that it's such an interesting story because she really uh.
She's often called the Cinderella of astronomy because she started
in this sort of scullery made path and then ended
up being really illuminary in her field, especially bizarre when
you consider that on top of the fact that she
was a woman at a time when men were really
(26:51):
running the show in terms of science. I love it
so much. Do you also have some listener mail, I do?
I do? I have two pieces. One is a pronounce
correction that kind of made me laugh. And this is
from our listener Jeremy, and he says, I just moved
to Nashville, Tennessee, but grew up in southeastern Missouri area,
which is kind of close to Memphis. And he's referring
(27:11):
to our s Sultana episode. He said, to hear you
mentioned that the Sultana stopped in Cairo, and he says
the locals pronounced it Caro, Illinois was interesting. Uh, the
small town in southern Illinois has a fascinating history within itself.
It was once a bustling river city that was blessed
with prosperity surged by post Civil War activities. Now, however,
it's an extremely poor and run down city, which is
(27:33):
unfortunate because of all its history. Uh, which is super interesting.
He um, So he corrected our pronunciation on Cairo, our
listener and also read about the same thing. That's one
of those things that will always be super hard for
me for people that don't know Atlanta. We have a
street here which you would look at and think was
post Leon, and they call it posta Leon and it
(27:53):
makes me crazy. So so apologies to Cairo. I did
not mean to um slur your an aim. And we
also have one from our listener Heather, which is in
relation to our Francis glessnar Lee episode. She says, Hi,
Dracy and Holly, I am a crime scene investigator in Nevada.
You might be interested to know that Francis's contributions are
(28:13):
not included in most literature and books for modern crime
scene investigations. I have not heard of Francis glessnar Lee
during my studies in school or once I became an investigator.
Most of the information provided in crime scene references cover
the contributions of Edmund Locard, Alphonse Bertillon. I might be
pronouncing that wrong because I always french it up, Sir
Francis Galton and others a k a. Men. As a
(28:36):
woman crime scene investigator, it was refreshing to hear about
women's contributions to my field. Thank you for the episode.
I would love to hear more episodes involving crime scene
investigations or forensics. Me too. I love that stuff. Uh,
so that is cool. Uh, Heather, your job has to
be fascinating. I don't know that I could hack it,
but I'm very interested in it. Uh. If you would
(28:56):
like your right to us, you can certainly do so.
And that email address is History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You're probably used to it by now,
but that is a slight change from our previous address. Uh.
You can also connect with us at Facebook dot com
slash mist in history, on Twitter at misst in history
at misst in history dot tumbler dot com, on pinterest
(29:18):
dot com slash mist in History. You can visit us
at our website, which is missed in History dot com.
We have got you missed in History covered. Uh. You
would like to learn a little bit more about topic
related to today's episode, you can go to our parent website,
how stuff Works. Type in comets in the search bar
and you will get an article called how comets work
and you can learn a little bit more about these
(29:40):
heavenly bodies that Caroline Herschel was so instrumental in studying.
You can learn about commets or almost anything else your
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh, and
today is for me a whoa Astronomy Day because I
(00:21):
love astronomy. I love talking about space and all things astronomical,
So it's a special in my wheelhouse one. But also, uh,
we're talking about a woman astronomer who really managed to
break the barrier of women in scientific fields way earlier
than you might anticipate. Uh, in part because she was
working alongside her brother and that sort of gave her
(00:43):
entree into the world of science and astronomy and an
equal measure though it was due to her really steadfast
dedication to her work. She was a very no nonsense
woman and completely focused. Uh. And as a consequence, she
had achieved a great deal. So we're talking about Caroline
Lucretia Herschel, who was born on March sixteenth of seventeen
(01:05):
fifty and she was born in Hanover, Germany. Her parents
were Anna ills Mortzen and Isaac Herschel, and when Caroline
was born, the Herschels were already in their eighteenth year
of marriage, so they had already had a pretty large family.
They ended up having a total of ten children, and
Caroline was the eighth of them, although four of their
children did not live pastorally childhood, and according to family records,
(01:28):
the Herschel family line had actually come from Moravia, where
they left due to their Protestant beliefs and ended up
settling in Saxony. Isaac was a musician and he played
in a military regiment. He educated his sons in music
whenever he was home, and it was during these lessons
that Caroline's older brother, Williams, started to show some natural
(01:50):
gifts for music. He was not only musically talented, but
he was also extremely smart and very quick to learn
in other areas of study. Also, Yeah, and one thing
I feel like I should point out I didn't include
it in the notes when I said that he was
Isaac was able to educate his children when he was home.
Be a military musician in this context is not uh
(02:14):
as much of an easy ride as you may think.
These men had to travel with the troops, They were
in the trenches with the troops. They were really part
of a functioning, active military. It wasn't like they just
showed up to play trumpet before things happened, so he
really was traveling a lot. And while William was urged
(02:34):
into a musical career because of his natural proclivity that
exhibited itself very early on, Caroline really felt when she
looked back at their childhood. She mentions it in her
memoirs and in letters that if he had been allowed
to pursue other interests other than music, his genius and
astronomy really would have been revealed much earlier. And in
her memoirs she mentions that while her father, Isaac was
(02:58):
indeed devoted to music, he too was also interested in
the stars. And here's a quick excerpt from one of
her memories from childhood. She says, my father was a
great admirer of astronomy and had some knowledge of that science.
For I remember his taking me on a clear, frosty
night into the street to make me acquainted with several
of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing
(03:19):
at a comment which was then visible. And I well
remember with what delight he used to assist my brother
William in his various contrivances in the pursuit of his
philosophical studies. Among which was a neatly turned four inch
globe upon which the equator and ecliptic were engraved by
my brother. Caroline was also very attached to her brother William,
(03:40):
who was twelve years older than she was, from the
time she was really very young. Yeah. She speaks of
him so lovingly and with great adoration. Uh in her memoirs.
It's it's easy for me to identify with because my
siblings are all much older than me, and I look
at them in prettating my oldest sister almost as a
parent figure. In it's a very similar relationship that she
(04:01):
had with William, especially because Isaac traveled so much. Uh.
And while Isaac wanted his children to learn music and
French and philosophy, particularly all of his children, his wife
UH and I had a really much more strict and
sensible path in mind for Caroline. When she was quite young,
it became Caroline's job to knit all of the socks
(04:22):
and stockings for her brothers, and as the male siblings
of the family pursued their musical careers, Caroline learned how
to care for a home. She really did not get
the benefit of kind of the more philosophical education in
seventeen sixty one, Caroline got really severe typhus fever and
it nearly killed her. Even after she got better, it
(04:44):
took a really long time for her to regain her strength,
and she recounted having to crawl up and downstairs on
all fours for months because she was too weak to
walk up and down them. Uh So this illness also
pretty significantly stunted Caroline's growth. She was really diminutive even
when she was in her adulthood and not growing anymore.
(05:05):
She was less than five ft tall. Uh And you know,
it left her not particularly pleasing to the eye in
their opinion, And so her parents sort of came to
this conclusion that she was never really going to have
any marriage prospects, and so she should hope for a
career as a scullery made like that. That was they
were trying to be very practical. It sounds really rough
for a parent to do, particularly and to the modern era,
(05:27):
where you know, children are encouraged to really follow their
dreams and pursue their heart's desires. Um. But in this instance,
this meant that Caroline's mother, Anna basically doubled down on
her insistence that her daughter really needed to stick to
learning useful skills and leave the life of the mind
to her brothers. In the early seventeen sixties, Caroline's brother
(05:48):
William traveled to England to pursue work as a music
teacher in organist after he deserted his position with the
Hannovarian Guards. Even while he spent time in various town
was traveling far away people, the family was really hoping
that he would come back to Hanover to settle down,
and he didn't make an appearance back in Germany in
(06:09):
seventeen sixty four, but it was really more than anything else,
just to tell the family that he was not coming
back to live. He was moving to England permanently, and
Caroline's memoir details this is a time of joyful reunion,
but also sadness that she was too busy with scullery work,
uh and with her first communion to really see him,
(06:29):
and this bittersweet knowledge that they all shared that it
would likely be quite some time before anyone in the
family was going to see him again. And in this
particular part of her memoir, she is really extremely clear
and does not hide the fact that he is her
very favorite brother. She calls him her dearest brother. So
when William left, and as we mentioned, it conflicted with
(06:53):
her first communion, she was really heartbroken that her goodbye
was cut short, and so she wrote this about his departure.
It's a fact on my shattered nerves. I will not
attempt to describe nor what I felt. For days and
weeks after. I wish it were possible to say what
I wished to say without feeling a new that feverish
(07:13):
wretchedness which accompanied my walk in the afternoon with some
of my school companions, and my black silk dress and
bouquet of artificial flowers, the same which had served my
sister on her bridal day. I could think of nothing
that on my return I should find nobody but my
disconsolate father and mother. So sad uh. She really just
(07:33):
adored her brother, and you know, he was like a
ray of sunshine when he came home, and knowing that
he was gone really broke her heart. And the following August,
their father, Isaac, had a seizure which left his right
side almost entirely paralyzed, and so his inability to play
or teach music at the level that he once had,
which had been his great joy, and the various problems
(07:55):
several of his children were having in their lives. You know. Again,
Caroline was one of many, and there were a number
of struggles happening in the family and the fact that
he had kind of as a consequence of being uh,
left with this paralysis. He couldn't do this thing that
they had been doing, which was teaching Caroline on the
slide from her mother. Uh. You know, when her mother
(08:16):
was not around, he would secretly be like, common, will
teach you a little bit of music. Uh, And they
just couldn't pull that off anymore with his infirm state,
and all of this sort of conspired to leave this
once boisterous man really quite depressed and suffering in his
final several years. He ended up dying on March seventeen
sixty seven. While her father's attempts to offer her instruction
(08:39):
were cut short, Caroline did get some lessons from the
daughter of a family who lived in the same house
as rehearsals. When she was a teenager, her friend died
of consumption, which shut yet another door for education for Caroline,
and she just really abhorred the thought of life as
a maid. She really really wanted intellectual and creative emulation,
(09:01):
So she was trying to figure out how she could
get a slightly higher position like that of a governess quote,
where the want of a knowledge of French would be
no objection. Yeah, she knew she was not stupid and
that she was fairly bright, but that she hadn't had
all the educational opportunities that would really prepare her for
a much better position than I made. But she was
(09:22):
just trying to think sort of practically about Okay, what
could I do that's better than this? Uh, And she
did at one point managed to convince her mother and
her brother's after her father had died, that she should
be sent for a short time to a school to
learn millinary and sewing, and she describes this as a
very happy time, although her brothers were very clear that
(09:43):
they were sending her just so she could make things
for herself, that this was not going to be a
professional um stepping stone at all. Once she returned home, however,
from this short time away where she was learning new
things and meeting new people, she really just fell back
into the same patterns of you know, constant chores and
schedule and drudgery that she so despised. That changed when
(10:06):
the family got a letter from William in the fall
of seventeen seventy one. In this letter, he proposed that
Caroline come to live with him and service as housekeeper
and also as a singer to accompany him in concerts.
He proposed a two year trial and said that if
it didn't work out, he would send her back. And
Caroline was so super excited by this prospect that even
(10:30):
before it was all approved by her mother and the
rest of the family, she started to practice singing in
secret um so that William had actually asked another of
their brothers who was musically skilled, to tutor her. But
there were some siblings skirmishes that really made that fall apart.
Her brother kind of made fun of her and she
didn't like it, so she just practiced on her own.
(10:52):
And she also just in trying to lay the groundwork
so that they would have no excuse to keep her.
She knitted enough box and stocking so the whole family
would be covered for at least two years. She was
really trying to make it as easy as possible to
make her case to go. In the end, when William
went to Germany to get Caroline, he also gave their
(11:13):
mother a small annuity which she could use to hire
some help to replace Caroline's work around the house. Yeah,
I mean they were in effect losing a maid as well.
So I feel though, like I should note that while
Caroline really hated the idea of being a maid, she
didn't seem to hate her mother. Um and this could
just be one of those cases of wording, but when
(11:35):
she talks about leaving Hanover, she refers to her as
her dear mother and the difficulty of leaving her. So
I think she did love her mother and and have
you know, positive feelings for her as much as she
sort of hated the ideas that her mother had for
her life. So Caroline and Williams set out for England together,
(11:55):
and in Caroline's uh memoirs, she describes this trip at
great length and with lots of details, and she talks
about all the stages of the journey and all the
trials and discomfort that they often encountered because travel was
extremely difficult. Um. William's journal, on the other hand, just
says August sixteen, seventeen seventy two, set off on my
(12:16):
return to England and company with my sister. That just
cracked me up when I found it in her in
her memoir, it was it's so funny, So what's Caroline
and William got to England. Caroline did indeed, learned to
sing and she developed her soprano voice so she could
accompany her organist brother and performances. She also took two
(12:36):
or three lessons a day from her brother, because remember
at this point he was pretty successful music teacher. But
that was not the only thing that William was up
to in Bath. While he was successful in music, he'd
already turned his interest to science. He had astronomy students
as well as music students, and he had been writing
scientific papers for the Bath Philosophical Society. Uh, there's part
(12:59):
of me that unders if this is not why he
was like, I'm never coming back to Germany, Like he
knew he would be kind of locked into the music
career there, and he had already started to toy with
this really significant career change. And Caroline arrived in the
midst of William kind of making this transition in his life.
And so for her, going from a life of repetition
(13:20):
and predictability and menial duties to one of assisting her
whirlwind brother was a huge change. For this woman who
was only twenty two at the time, so she was
suddenly responsible for the budget of the household and taking
care of trips to the market. And she performed with
her brother as a featured singer often, and she apparently
also had a lot of arguments with her brother's hired servant.
(13:41):
She does not speak very well of that woman in
her letters her memoirs. She was also initially pretty homesick.
Her English wasn't good enough to bond with anyone else
in Bath, and her brother was incredibly busy. Her sister
had been left a widow with six children, and Caroline
also felt badly the there wasn't anything she could do
to help. But on the upside, you know, while she
(14:05):
is in this whirlwind, crazy world, the learning that she
had yearned for back in Germany but had been denied
was certainly abundant in England. She was mentally stimulated at
all times. She had to learn the bookkeeping, as we
were saying, she was learning English as quickly as she
could uh, and she had to learn a lot more
about music in pretty short order. And in some ways
(14:27):
this isolation of this transition and her homesickness really likely
bonded her to William more than ever, although she really
didn't get as much of his time and attention as
she wished because he had so many students to see
in addition to his extracurricular studies in astronomy. She was
making a really good name for herself as a singer,
though she was even approached by other music companies to
(14:50):
perform with them, but she declined, saying that she really
needed to stay with her brother and his work. And
as William turned his attention progressively more and more to
a strong to me, Caroline followed suit. Uh, she assisted
her brother in the assembling of telescopes and analyzing the heavens,
and we could do a whole podcast just about William
(15:10):
and sort of how his music to astronomy transition happened.
So I don't want people to think I'm just leaving
that out, but Caroline's really the focus here. But while
she's doing all of this and helping him assemble things
and polishing lenses and mirrors, she ended up learning a
great deal about astronomy herself. William is credited with discovering
Uranus in one while he was actually searching for double stars. Incidentally,
(15:33):
the planet was initially named George or the Georgian Star,
after the King of England, which sounds a lot more
majestic than just calling a star George. As a return
for his work, William Herschel was innighted and appointed to
the position of court Astronomer for King George the Third.
And this new appointment meant that the Herschels had to
(15:54):
move closer to Windsor Castle. And while he was making
less money as the royal astronomer than he had as
a music shin and teacher, uh William Herschel was now
making enough that he didn't have to kind of have
this double career situation, so he could focus entirely on
his scientific endeavors. And William used this new position to
build a bigger telescope and he launched a long term
(16:16):
survey of the sky that would turn into a project
that really ran two decades. And initially, as he would
observe heavenly bodies through his telescope, he was up on
this ladder and he would call them out to Caroline,
who would be down on the ground, and she would
carefully record everything that he said, so he really trusted
her to keep track of everything that they were witnessing
(16:37):
and identifying. As their list got bigger and became more detailed,
took on the name New General Catalog. This name persists
in codified for him today, as the many astronomical objects
are still identified by their NGC number. And William also
gave Caroline her own what he called her quote seven
foot Newtonian sweeper, and this was a telescope that she
(17:01):
would often use to observe the night sky, uh just
on her own or when she was filling in for
William while he was traveling, so that they wouldn't have
any gaps in their project. On February three, she identified
an open cluster which is on the record as n
g C sixty. The same year, she observed and recorded
(17:22):
n GC to fifty three, also known as the Sculptor Galaxy.
And one of her claims to fame is that she
was the first woman credited with discovering a comet. So
on August one and again on following nights of seventeen six,
she saw an object that was moving across the night
sky and she identified it as a comet, and she
(17:45):
immediately sent word by mail to all of their fellow
astronomers about her discovery in the hopes that they too
would study it. She wanted to share this information as
rapidly as possible. After the comment discovery, William, who was
the King's astronomer, lobbied for his assistant Caroline to be
paid for her work. This made her the first woman
(18:05):
to actually be paid as a professional scientist in Great Britain,
and she would go on to discover a total of
eight comments uh in a little longer than the decade
following that first comet identification. And this was all happening
during a sort of comic craze that was happening in
post enlightenment Georgian England. So it gave Caroline a certain
(18:26):
degree of celebrity, although as a woman astronomer, which was
you know, certainly an odd duck for the times, she
was sometimes lampooned in comics, just as she was also
being lauded as something of a visionary. In seventeen eighty six,
Williams started courting a wealthy widow neighbor, Mary Bernie Pitt.
When when William married her in seventeen eighty eight, his
(18:48):
partnership with Caroline changed really considerably and became somewhat strained uh,
the household duties that Caroline had been taking care of
all of this time were pasted to William's bride, and
the sister was then freed up to pursue her astronomy
work full time. And this certainly sounds like a good thing.
She was likely much more passionate about the astronomy, but
(19:09):
the loss of control and her sense of place in
her brother's life really affected Caroline quite deeply. After sixteen
years living and working with William, Caroline moved to her
own lodgings and she started having to go to his
place to work. She no longer had keys to the
home or to the observatory, and we actually don't know
(19:30):
exactly what Caroline's feelings were at this time. There is
actually a ten year gap in her personal journals from
sevent to sevent those documents were destroyed. There are journals
with ripped out pages. Um When her personal notes and
narratives start up again near the end of the century,
she speaks of her sister in law, who by all
accounts was a really gentle and amiable woman. Everyone really
(19:54):
liked her with a great deal of kindness, and the
two did eventually become very close, but I think it
was a rough ride for those ten years. She probably
wrote some things down she did not want to be
kept on record. Those ten years were still spent working
both with her brother and on her own, and this
was in Caroline was discovering her many comments, and she
(20:14):
was keeping records of her work. The seven comments which
followed the first were observed and identified in December seventeen
eighty eight, January seventeen ninety, April seventeen nine, December seventeen,
October seventeen two, November seventeen and August seventeen ninety seven.
(20:36):
And the first Royal Astronomer of England, who was named
John Flamsteed, had compiled an existing star catalog in the
late sixteen hundreds in early seventeen hundreds, and so in
addition to using this new free time that Caroline had
at her disposal after her brother's marriage to search for comments,
she also used it to cross index the Flamsteed catalog
(20:58):
with the data that she William had compiled, and she
was able to add more than five hundred additional stars
to the existing record as a consequence. William died in
eighteen twenty two, and after her brother was gone, Caroline
went back to Germany where she continued her work entirely
on her own. So on her own after William's death,
and also working with her nephew, who was also an astronomer,
(21:22):
Caroline cataloged nebulae along with her brother. Caroline was instrumental
in expanding the number of known star clusters from one
hundred to two thousand, five hundred and those are rough numbers.
It's you know, more than that. But she went on
to get many many accolades uh as she aged. She
(21:43):
won a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in
eighteen twenty eight for her work in nebulae. In eighteen
thirty two, the King of Denmark honored her with the
medal for her work. She was made an honorary member
of the Royal Society in eighteen thirty five, and she
actually shared the honor of being the first woman to
be named an honorary member of the Society with Mary Somerville,
(22:06):
who also worked in astronomy, and she was also given
this honorary membership the same year. In eighteen thirty eight,
she was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
In eighteen forty six, she was given the Gold Medal
for Science by the King of Prussia. Caroline wrote her
last entry in her day book in September of eighteen
(22:27):
forty five, and in the winter of eighteen forty eight
forty eight, Caroline became ill as the cold of the
season swept in. She initially refused a neighbor friend's offer
to move to her bed to a warmer room than
it existed in and she was already an elderly woman
and somewhat freel at this point, and as a consequence of,
you know, staying in this cold with a compromised immune
(22:50):
system already, she just got sicker and sicker. She did
eventually allow them to move her bed, and while she
rallied now and again, she never really recovered. Her spirit
remained until the end, though, and in a letter from
the same bed moving friend to Caroline's nephew John, it's
reported that when a male friend sent his love and
hopes that Caroline would soon be well enough for him
(23:12):
to visit and give her a kiss, as he had
on her previous birthday, she replied by saying, tell the
general that I have not tasted anything I liked so well.
I just love that she kind of was a little flirty,
even at the very end. It was very sweet. Uh.
And the letter in which that story was relayed to
John was dated January six, and Caroline died just three
(23:35):
days later on January nine. She was ninety seven at
the time. A letter written by Caroline's niece to a
cousin reads, I felt almost a sense of joyful relief
at the death of my aunt, and the thought that
now the unquiet heart was at rest. All that she
had of love to give was concentrated on her beloved brother.
At his death, she felt herself alone. And Caroline wrote
(24:00):
her own tombstone inscription, and it reads, the eyes of
her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens.
She had very pragmatically made all of the arrangements for
her burial uh and her funeral years before her death,
so when she passed it was basically like, Nope, everything's
taken care of already, because she didn't want to burden
(24:20):
her nephew or any of her other relatives with dealing
with it. She also wrote, I am nothing, I have nothing.
All I am all I know I owe to my brother.
I am only the tool, which he shaped to his use.
A well trained puppy dog would have done as much.
So some people interpret this as devotion to a sibling,
and others have read it read it almost as resentful
(24:43):
the words of a woman who's bound by obligation to
do this because her brother was her benefactor and told
her to. But given her obvious love for astronomy and
the work they did together, it seems more in line
with the thinking of someone who wishes to brush away
praise and credit and instead becus the spotlight on someone else. Yeah,
(25:03):
she seemed generally uncomfortable with kind of talking about herself
in any sort of personal way, or you know, with accolades.
She was always very quick to kind of shrug them off.
There's a really lovely intro written in her memoir and
about her, and it says her own recollections go back
to the great earthquake of Lisbon. She lived through the
(25:25):
American War, the Old French Revolution, the rise and fall
of Napoleon, and all manner of lesser events and wars.
She saw all the improvements and inventions from the lumbering
post wagon in which she made her first journey from
Hanover to the railroads and electric telegraphs, which have intersected
all Europe. For she lived well down into the reign
of Victoria, but her work of minding the heavens with
(25:47):
her brother engrossed all her thoughts, and she scarcely mentions
any public events. Several comments are named after her, including
Herschel rigole as a lunar creator see Herschel, and an
asteroid called Lucretia, which is her middle name. One of
Williams's telescopes is on display at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago,
(26:08):
and another is on display at Cambridge, and there are
several other pieces of telescopes um at various observatories and
museums throughout the world. The Herschel Museum of Astronomy now
stands at nineteen New King Street and Bath and that
is where William and Caroline lived together. And I would
love to go visit, said Tracy. Let's do that. So yeah,
(26:30):
that it's such an interesting story because she really uh.
She's often called the Cinderella of astronomy because she started
in this sort of scullery made path and then ended
up being really illuminary in her field, especially bizarre when
you consider that on top of the fact that she
was a woman at a time when men were really
(26:51):
running the show in terms of science. I love it
so much. Do you also have some listener mail, I do?
I do? I have two pieces. One is a pronounce
correction that kind of made me laugh. And this is
from our listener Jeremy, and he says, I just moved
to Nashville, Tennessee, but grew up in southeastern Missouri area,
which is kind of close to Memphis. And he's referring
(27:11):
to our s Sultana episode. He said, to hear you
mentioned that the Sultana stopped in Cairo, and he says
the locals pronounced it Caro, Illinois was interesting. Uh, the
small town in southern Illinois has a fascinating history within itself.
It was once a bustling river city that was blessed
with prosperity surged by post Civil War activities. Now, however,
it's an extremely poor and run down city, which is
(27:33):
unfortunate because of all its history. Uh, which is super interesting.
He um, So he corrected our pronunciation on Cairo, our
listener and also read about the same thing. That's one
of those things that will always be super hard for
me for people that don't know Atlanta. We have a
street here which you would look at and think was
post Leon, and they call it posta Leon and it
(27:53):
makes me crazy. So so apologies to Cairo. I did
not mean to um slur your an aim. And we
also have one from our listener Heather, which is in
relation to our Francis glessnar Lee episode. She says, Hi,
Dracy and Holly, I am a crime scene investigator in Nevada.
You might be interested to know that Francis's contributions are
(28:13):
not included in most literature and books for modern crime
scene investigations. I have not heard of Francis glessnar Lee
during my studies in school or once I became an investigator.
Most of the information provided in crime scene references cover
the contributions of Edmund Locard, Alphonse Bertillon. I might be
pronouncing that wrong because I always french it up, Sir
Francis Galton and others a k a. Men. As a
(28:36):
woman crime scene investigator, it was refreshing to hear about
women's contributions to my field. Thank you for the episode.
I would love to hear more episodes involving crime scene
investigations or forensics. Me too. I love that stuff. Uh,
so that is cool. Uh, Heather, your job has to
be fascinating. I don't know that I could hack it,
but I'm very interested in it. Uh. If you would
(28:56):
like your right to us, you can certainly do so.
And that email address is History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You're probably used to it by now,
but that is a slight change from our previous address. Uh.
You can also connect with us at Facebook dot com
slash mist in history, on Twitter at misst in history
at misst in history dot tumbler dot com, on pinterest
(29:18):
dot com slash mist in History. You can visit us
at our website, which is missed in History dot com.
We have got you missed in History covered. Uh. You
would like to learn a little bit more about topic
related to today's episode, you can go to our parent website,
how stuff Works. Type in comets in the search bar
and you will get an article called how comets work
and you can learn a little bit more about these
(29:40):
heavenly bodies that Caroline Herschel was so instrumental in studying.
You can learn about commets or almost anything else your
brain can think about. If you visit our parent site,
which is how Stuffworks dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works
dot com in the steep in the
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.