Mary Somerville

Mary Somerville was dubbed the Queen of Science, a title earned through a lifetime of learning all she could about various math and science subjects and then parsing those concepts out in her writing for more general audiences.

Research:

• Collins, Helen. “Mary Somerville: Her Legacy for Women in Science.” Oxford Scientist. Feb. 11, 2022. https://oxsci.org/mary-somerville-her-legacy-for-women-in-science/
• Gregersen, Erik. "Mary Somerville". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Somerville
• Neeley, Kathryn A. “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind.” Cambridge University Press. 2001.
• Somerville, Mary. “On the magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. December 31, 1833. Volume 2. Accessed online: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspl.1815.0282
• Somerville, Mary. “Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville.” John Murray, London. 1872. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27747/pg27747-images.html
• Somerville, Mary. “On Molecular and Microscopic Science.” John Murray. London. 1869. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55886/pg55886-images.html
• Uri, John. “175 Years Ago: Astronomers Discover Neptune, the Eighth Planet.” NASA. Sept. 21, 2021. https://www.nasa.gov/history/175-years-ago-astronomers-discover-neptune-the-eighth-planet/#:~:text=On%20the%20night%20of%20Sept,orbit%20of%20the%20planet%20Uranus.
• Wills, Matthew. “Mary Somerville, Queen of 19th Century Science.” JSTOR Daily. March 2, 2016. https://daily.jstor.org/mary-somerville-queen-of-19th-century-science/
• Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Biography of Mary Somerville, Mathematician, Scientist, and Writer." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/mary-somerville-biography-3530354.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Mary Somerville was dubbed
the Queen of Science in her obituary in The Morning

(00:22):
Post in eighteen seventy two, and she had earned that
title through a lifetime of learning all that she could
about various math and science subjects, which was a lot,
and then parsing those concepts out in her writing for
more general audiences as well as scholars. And she completely
fascinates me because she's one of those topics that touches

(00:43):
so many others that we have talked about on the show.
It is a little surprising she isn't a more well
known historical figure or that she hasn't been mentioned on
our show over and over. Like I literally had a
moment doing Researcher. I was like, am I being punks?
Is this all April fool stuff? This isn't a real person,
because how could she have been as involved with all
of these luminaries and not be more prominent in the

(01:07):
historical discussion of math and science. I had more of
a repeatedly second guessing, like, did we do that? Did
we do it? I did that? Also? Yeah? Yeah, And
I really really like her, And while her life certainly
had its sorrows, her story is overall not a bummer
in my opinion. So it seemed like a good antidote

(01:29):
to some of the darker stuff that I have been
pursuing as of late. If our Halloween show really bummed
you out, is a good off ramp from that, you're
gonna have a much better time. So. She was born
Mary Fairfax on December twenty sixth, seventeen eighty in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland.
She was the daughter of Admiral Sir William George Fairfax

(01:52):
and Mary Chamber Fairfax, and was one of seven children.
Four of those children lived to adulthood. Because of my
father was away at sea a lot, her mother really
ran the household and as a little girl, Mary was
taught to read by her mother, but like a lot
of girls at the time, she didn't receive formal education.
As a small child, she was lonely and interested in

(02:14):
the outdoors from an early age, and she later recounted quote,
I never cared for dolls and had no one to
play with me. I amused myself in the garden, which
was much frequented by birds. I knew most of them,
their flight and their habits. I love this, It's so charming.
Mary went to a boarding school for a year when
she was ten, and this year of education was largely

(02:37):
due to her father having returned from time at sea
to find her without much basic knowledge. It seems like
he felt her mom had fallen down on the job
of her home education a little bit. Fairfax said of
his daughter, quote, this kind of life will never do.
Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts.

(02:57):
When her year at school, which she hated, was completed,
and by completed it seems like she might have been
invited to leave, she set out on a journey of
self education, devouring whatever books she could get her hands on.
But some of this, she would later write, was out
of shame, because when she returned home she realized that
she was still unable to write well enough to answer

(03:20):
even simple notes sent by neighbors, and at one point
she had sent her brother a letter with misspellings that
got her chastised for wasting her parents' money for that
time in schooling that apparently achieved nothing, and she wrote
of this event quote, this passed over, and I was
like a wild animal escaped out of a cage. She

(03:41):
was interested in everything around her. She had just not
done well in the structured school setting. Her uncle, Reverend
Thomas Somerville, who was one of the few adults to
understand her simultaneous disdain for formal schooling and her deep
desire for knowledge, helped her by teaching her Latin. In
the winter that Mary turned thirteen, her mother took an

(04:03):
apartment in Edinburgh. Her father was once again away, and
she sent Mary to a writing school to improve her
handwriting and also to learn some basic math. She later
took Pianoforte lessons, and she went to dancing school, and
she also took up painting. Mary's curiosity about higher math
was sparked in a pretty unusual way. She told this

(04:25):
story later in her life. This way quote, I was
often invited with my mother to the tea parties given
either by widows or maiden ladies who resided at Burnt Island.
A pool of commerce used to be keenly contested till
a late hour at these parties, which bored me exceedingly,
But I there became acquainted with a missus Ogilvy, much

(04:46):
younger than the rest, who asked me to go and
see fancy works she was doing, and at which she
was very clever. I went the next day, and after
admiring her work and being told how it was done,
she showed me a monthly Mas magazine with colored plates
of ladies' dresses, charades, and puzzles. At the end of
a page, I read what appeared to me to be

(05:08):
simply an arithmetical question, But on turning the page, I
was surprised to see strange looking lines mixed with letters,
chiefly x'es and y's, and asked, what is that? Oh,
said miss Ogilvie. It is a kind of arithmetic. They
call it algebra. But I can tell you nothing about it.
And we talked about other things, But on going home,

(05:30):
I thought I would look if any of our books
can tell me what was meant by algebra. So while
she struggled initially to find books that would answer her
questions or find anybody who would explain this to her,
this really set Mary down a path of just self
propelled academic rigor, as she kept trying to take in

(05:50):
every bit of information she could find to achieve understanding.
When Mary was twenty four, she married a distant cousin,
Samuel Gregg. Samuel didn't exactly hamper Mary's efforts at learning,
but he didn't support them either. She wrote later that quote,
he had a very low opinion of the capacity of
my sex. So it seems like Samuel just thought of

(06:13):
her efforts at constantly learning as kind of a quaint hobby.
In general, this marriage did not seem to be a
particularly joyous union. Samuel had just a small bachelor home
in London, which Mary did not like, and they didn't
have much in common, so she spent a lot of
her days walking alone and studying mathematics. The one thing

(06:35):
that she said she loved about her new life in
London was seeing the Italian opera for the first time.
Samuel and Mary had two children together, but their marriage
was brief, and there's also a bit of a gap
in information about their second child. Their first son, Varnsov Greeg,
grew up to be a barrister, but their second son

(06:55):
died in childhood, and it was really hard for Holly
to find anything about him, even his name. Samuel died
in eighteen oh seven, which meant Mary was a twenty
seven year old widow and mother. The second son was
still alive at that point, and her own account indicated
that she moved with her two children back into her
father's home and was nursing her youngest. During her time

(07:19):
back in Scotland, she started studying, according to her account,
spherical trigonometry, conic sections, and Newton's Principia. She struggled with Principia,
of which she wrote, quote, I found it extremely difficult
and certainly did not understand it till I returned to
it sometime after when I studied that wonderful work with

(07:40):
great assiduity and wrote numerous notes and observations on it.
For the next five years, Mary's study focused primarily on mathematics.
She described getting a list of mathematics books from a
professor at the University of Edinburgh to make herself a
comprehensive course on the subject, and bought everyone, which she
referred to as an excellent little library. Her writing about

(08:03):
this acquisition and the way her days played out as
she studied it, reveals a lot about her personality. Quote
I could hardly believe that I possessed such a treasure.
When I looked back on the day that I first
saw the mysterious word algebra, and the long course of
years in which I had persevered almost without hope, it
taught me never to despair. I had now the means

(08:26):
and pursued my studies with increased assiduity. Concealment was no
longer possible, nor was it attempted. I was considered eccentric
and foolish, and my conduct was highly disapproved of by many,
especially by some members of my own family. They expected
me to entertain and keep a gay house for them,
and in that they were disappointed. As I was quite independent.

(08:50):
I did not care for their criticism. A great part
of the day I was occupied with my children. In
the evening, I worked, played piquet with my father, or
played on the piano, sometimes with violent accompaniment. This work
in mathematics paid off. In eighteen eleven, Mary submitted a
solution to a published problem in the journal The Mathematical

(09:10):
Repository and won a second place medal for her solution.
Mary remarried in eighteen twelve, this time to William Somerville,
who was another cousin, and the son of her uncle,
Reverend Thomas Somerville, to whom she had been close all
her life. She was actually born in Thomas Somerville's house.
William worked for the Army's medical department, and unlike her

(09:31):
first husband, he was very supportive of her and her studies.
William and Mary's daughter Martha later wrote of her father quote,
his love and admiration for her were unbounded. He frankly
and willingly acknowledged her superiority to himself, and many of
our friends can bear witness to the honest pride and
gratification which he always testified in the fame and honors

(09:53):
she attained. While Mary's husband and her father in law
were very in favor of her intellectual pres suits, that
wasn't true of the entire Somerville family, and this really
led particularly to some harsh letters back and forth between
William and his sisters. They would say Mary was doing
things she should not, and William was basically like, shut
up in mind your business. Family squabbles aside, the Summerville

(10:19):
seemed to have been a very good match for one another,
and we will talk more about their life together and
Mary's first forays into scientific publishing after we pause for
a sponsor break. In eighteen sixteen, Mary and William moved

(10:42):
to London for William's work. The couple already had two
daughters when they moved. Margaret was born in eighteen thirteen,
so the year after they got married, and Martha was born.
In eighteen fifteen. In London, their third daughter, Mary Charlotte,
was born. The couple did have one other child, a son,
who died as a baby. During their time in London,

(11:02):
they met a lot of notable intellectuals of the time.
William was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and
he brought Mary with him to lectures, and there they
met Charles Babbage and John Herschel, among others. Mary also
became Ada Byron's private tutor when Ada was young, and
they became good friends as she grew up. And it
was actually through the Summervilles that Ada met Charles Babbage

(11:24):
when she was eighteen. The Summerville's daughter, Margaret, died in
eighteen twenty three at the age of ten. Mary wrote
of this moment late in her life, quote, the illness
and death of our eldest threw Somerville and me into
the deepest affliction. She was a child of intelligence and
acquirements far beyond her tender age. Soon after, William was

(11:47):
given a position at Chelsea Hospital and the family moved
to Chelsea to be close to his work. This was
really when their close relationship with Lady Byron and her
daughter Ada began. And from the time she was a child,
Ada was close with Mary and would often stay at
the Summerville home. Yeah. Mary almost seems like I don't
know if I would say a second mother, but probably

(12:08):
pretty close. Like Ada would just spend like the week
at their house because she loved it there so much.
In eighteen twenty six, Mary's first paper was read at
the Royal Society That was on the magnetizing power of
the more refrangible solar rays, so you know, very light stuff.
In it, she described her own experiments that she had
conducted in magnetism, writing quote. In the year eighteen thirteen,

(12:32):
Professor Morrichini of Rome announced that steel exposed in a
particular manner to the concentrated violet rays of the prismatic
spectrum becomes magnetic. His experiments, however, having uniformly failed in
other hands, had ceased to excite general attention, especially in
this country, whose climate is usually so unfavorable for such researches.

(12:54):
The unusual clearness of weather last summer, however, induced Missus
Somerville to make the attempt, Having at that time no
information of the manner in which Professor Morrikini's experiments were conducted.
It occurred to her, however, as unlikely that if the
whole of a needle were equally exposed to the violet rays,
the same influence should at the same time produce a

(13:15):
south pole at one end and a north at the
other of it. She therefore covered half of a slender
sewing needle an inch long with paper and fixed it
in such a manner as to expose the uncovered part
to the violet rays of a spectrum thrown by an
equi angular prism of flint glass on a panel at
five feet distance. As the place of the spectrum shifted,

(13:37):
the needle was moved so as to keep the exposed
part constantly in the violet ray, the sun being bright.
In less than two hours, the needle, which before the
experiment showed no signs of polarity, had become magnetic, the
exposed end attracting the south pole of a suspended magnetic
needle and repelling the north. No iron was near to

(13:58):
disturb the experiment, which was repeated did the same day
under similar circumstances, with a view to detect any source
of fallacy in the first attempt, but with the same result.
Just as in Aside, she does write about herself in
the third person here, but this is her paper. That's
that It happens a lot in this era. I feel
like The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was

(14:21):
founded the same year Mary's paper, published by Henry Brahm.
The goal of the society was to make information available
and understandable to the masses, and Mary was asked to help.
Bram wanted her to create a condensed English language version
of Pierre Simol Laplace's work on the Solar system celestial mechanics.

(14:42):
Mary took on this challenging job, but at first she
was reluctant. Her account of the request when, as follows quote,
I thought Lord Bram must have been mistaken with regard
to my acquirements, and naturally concluded that my self acquired
knowledge was so far inferior to that of the men
who had been educated in our universities that it would

(15:04):
be the height of presumption to attempt to write on
such a subject, or indeed on any other. A few
days after this, Lord Brahm came to Chelsea himself, and
Somerville joined with him in urging me at least to
make the attempt. It took Mary four years to complete
this adaptation. Unfortunately, her version wasn't condensed enough for Brom

(15:27):
He still thought it was just a too much book
for a mass market publication. But Mary's version, titled Mechanism
of the Heavens, was recognized by her scientific peers for
its value, and William Herschel's son, Sir John Herschel, helped
this book to find a home with another publisher, and
it was published in eighteen thirty one. The introduction to

(15:51):
the book was published a year later. That was really
a paper that could stand on its own, but it
offered a survey of the knowledge of astronomy that had
been achieved up to that point to contextualize the information
of the larger work. The book was praised pretty universally
by members of the scientific community, and poly math William
Wowell was so impressed that, in addition to a letter

(16:12):
of praise. He sent Mary a sonnet that he wrote
in her honor, which concluded with this stanza that dark
to you seems bright, perplexed, seems plain seen in the
depths of a pellucid mind, full of clear thought, pure
from the ill and vain that cloud the inward light.
An honored name be yours, and peace of heart. Grow

(16:32):
with your growing fame. Mary Somerville's next book would become
something of a lifelong project. The original edition, titled The
Connection of the Physical Sciences, was released in eighteen thirty four,
but nine more editions were released after that, all of
them edited and updated by Mary. This book, like Mechanism

(16:54):
of the Heavens, was intended to make scientific concepts accessible
and relatable, and it was a significantly ambitious job because
she was, as the title indicated, connecting multiple fields and
showing how they interacted and affected one another. So physics, astronomy, meteorology,
and geography were all included. In recognition of all of

(17:17):
this work, Mary was put on the civil List in
eighteen thirty five, so The Civilist has its own interesting history,
but was established as the list of expenses required to
support the monarch and their family, and this came to
include things like giving pensions to people doing work that
benefited or advanced Britain, and through that Mary Somerville was

(17:38):
granted a yearly pension of two hundred pounds thanks to
her nomination by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Two years later,
in eighteen thirty seven, Prime Minister Melbourne increased that number
to three hundred pounds annually. In eighteen thirty five, Mary
was also made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical
Society along with Caroline Herschel, making them the first two

(18:01):
women who were included in the organization. The society also
commissioned a bust of Somerville. She wrote of the honor quote,
I was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical
Society at the same time as Miss Caroline Herschel. To
be associated with so distinguished an astronomer was in itself
an honor. After her election to the Royal Society of London,

(18:24):
other similar societies followed suit, including the Royal Academy at
Dublin and Society Defusique a distoirs Naturelle of Geneva, another
accolade bestowed on her at this time was the naming
of a ship built in Liverpool in her honor. A
copy of the Royal Society bust was also used for
the figurehead of that ship, but the Mary Somerville sadly

(18:48):
sailed only once before being lost at sea. When she
writes about it, she's so sort of cavalier. It's like, well,
I don't know where that ship is. Perhaps the most
significant result of connection of the physical sciences was the
discovery of the planet Neptune. Mary did not discover the
planet herself, but she suggested its existence when she noted

(19:11):
that there was this sort of tricky issue with making
the math work when it came to the position of Uranus,
like something wasn't working out. There was something else involved, potentially,
and that was one of the new pieces of writing
that she included in the eighteen thirty six edition of
the book, which was its third. John Couch Adams was
intrigued by this problem and started to work out the math,

(19:33):
and then he was credited as one of the astronomers
whose work led to the discovery of Neptune. He shared
that honor with Urbane Leverier, who also calculated the position
of a likely heavenly body and Johann Gottfried Gale, who
was the first to see the planet and identify it.
That happened in eighteen forty six. In eighteen thirty eight,

(19:54):
William's health was suffering and the decision was made to
move to Italy in the hopes that it would improve.
They settled in Rome, and while they traveled around the country,
they never left Italy. As soon as they were settled in,
Mary got back to a regular writing schedule, working from
early morning until two pm, and then strolling the city
to take in whatever architecture or gallery struck their fancy

(20:16):
until dinner time. They often had expatriates and colleagues stop
by in the evenings for social visits, and this all
sounds like a pretty dreamy way to live. They spent
time at Bellaggio on Lake Como, which Mary described as
quote the most lonely village imaginable, which might sound like
a negative, but she also said that she quote liked

(20:36):
it exceedingly. They would have returned to England after Lake Como,
but William was once again six, so they decided not
to travel any farther than back to Florence, and there
Mary was given access to the private Library at Pitty Palace,
which was both an honor and a delight for her.
In eighteen forty four, Mary became an associate of the

(20:57):
College of Resurgenti in Rome and an honorary member of
the Imperial and Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Art
at Arezzo. Throughout all of these travels, while she was
working on the many updates to the connection of the
physical sciences, Mary also wrote her next book, Physical Geography,
which was published in eighteen forty eight. Sir John Herschel

(21:19):
was once again a huge support for Mary while she
was working on Physical Geography, because she had been concerned
that another book published before hers was too similar. That
was the German language book Cosmos, written by Alexander von
Humboldt and published in eighteen forty five. She recounted quote
when Cosmos appeared, I at once determined to put my

(21:41):
manuscript in the fire, when Somerville said, do not be rash.
Consult some of our friends Herschel, for instance. So I
sent the manuscript to Sir John Herschel, who advised me
by all means to publish it. When Physical Geography was released,
it was recognized as an important work which, like her
other work, made matters of science accessible to readers. It

(22:04):
was used as a textbook for decades after its publication.
The Christmas after that publication, the Summervilles and the Herschels
spent the holiday together in England, which also enabled the
Somervilles to visit with another friend, Michael Faraday. Mary wrote
of him quote, we had formed such a friendship with
mister Faraday that while we lived abroad, he sent me

(22:24):
a copy of everything he published. And on returning to England,
we renewed our friendship with that illustrious philosopher and attended
his lectures at the Royal Institution. He had already magnetized
a ray of polarized light, but was still lecturing on
the magnetic and diamagnetic properties of matter. At the last
lecture we attended, he showed the diamagnetism of flame, which

(22:46):
had been proved by a foreign philosopher. Mister Faraday never
would accept any honor. He lived in a circle of
friends to whom he was deeply attached. When the Summervilles
tried to return to Italy in eighteen forty nine, the
First Italian War of Independence was under way, so they
decided to pause in Munich until that conflict had died down.

(23:08):
After the winter, they moved to Salzburg and they stayed
there many months. When the war ended in August of
eighteen forty nine, the family traveled back to Italy, though
Mary wrote of their constant state of travel with a
sort of nonchalance. She noted of their stop in Piesheria
del guarda Italy quote, the devastation of the country was frightful.

(23:28):
Pasharia and its fortifications were in ruins. The villages around
had been burnt down, and the wretched inhabitants were beginning
to repair their roofless houses. Italy's ongoing political conflicts at
this time would once again be top of mind for
the Summerville's in the coming years, but this time they
remained in the country. We'll get into Mary's work for

(23:50):
the war effort after we pause for a word from
our sponsors. When the Second War of Italian Independence began
in eighteen fifty nine, the Summervilles were living in Florence,
and they supported the Italians who wanted to unite the

(24:11):
states of Italy under one flag and crown. In a
letter to her son, Vorensov, dated May twenty ninth, eighteen
fifty nine, Mary wrote, quote, everything is perfectly quiet here.
The Tuscans are giving money liberally for carrying on the war.
We have bought quantities of old linen, and your sisters
and I spend the day in making lint and bandages

(24:32):
for the wounded soldiers. Great quantities have already been sent
to Piedmont. Hitherto the war has been favorable to the
Allied army. God grant that England may not enter into
the contest till the Austrians are driven out of Italy.
After that point has been gained, our honor would be safe.
To take part with the oppressors and maintain despotism in

(24:54):
Italy would be infamous. She continued to keep Vorensov updated
on things in Flora and throughout the conflict. There are
many letters from her to him. When it came to
what must have been a truly painful life event, Mary
wrote only in her memoirs quote, I lost my husband
in Florence on the twenty sixth June eighteen sixty. From

(25:15):
the preceding narrative, maybe seeing the sympathy, affection and confidence
which always existed between us After William's death, Mary said
that her health needed a change, and she moved temporarily
to Laspezzia, Italy. She wanted to rewrite the Chemistry section
of Physical Sciences entirely during this time, but her daughters

(25:36):
convinced her not to and to spend that time on
some new projects to occupy her mind. Yeah, they were like,
you could do that, but it's fine, people love it.
Why don't you do something new? I think they I mean,
this is my conjecture. I suspect they wanted her to
engage in completely new things just to keep her mind
off of her sorrow at the time, and what captured

(25:58):
her curiosity was the advances that have been made in
microscopes and how they had enabled humans to perceive the
world in a new way. Eight years later, in eighteen
sixty nine, Somerville published on Molecular and Microscopic Science. During
the time that she spent writing it, she seemed to
return to the style of living that she and William
had enjoyed together traveling around Italy. This was not as

(26:22):
popular as her earlier works, but that same year the
Royal Geographic Society honored her with the Patron's Medal Mary
died in Naples, Italy, on November twenty ninth, eighteen seventy two,
asleep in her bed. Her library was left in its
entirety to the Ladies College at Girton, and she was
interred in the English Campisanto in Naples. When she died,

(26:45):
Mary was working on another book, which was her autobiography.
Mary's daughter Martha edited and annotated the work and it
was published as Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age,
and it came out the year after Mary's death. She
had read the same year that her book on microscopic
science had come out. Quote. I have lately entered my

(27:05):
eighty ninth year, grateful to God for the innumerable blessings
he has bestowed on me and my children, at peace
with all on earth. And I trust that I may
be at peace with my Maker when my last hour comes,
which cannot now be far distant. Although I have been
tried by many severe afflictions, my life upon the whole
has been happy. In my youth, I had to contend

(27:26):
with prejudice and illiberality. Yet I was of a quiet
temper and easy to live with, and I never interfered
with or pride into other people's affairs. I never had
an enemy. I have never been of a melancholy disposition.
Though depressed sometimes by circumstances, I always rallied again. And
although I seldom laugh, I can laugh heartily at wit

(27:47):
or on fit occasion. The short time I have to
live naturally occupies my thoughts in the blessed hope of
meeting again with my beloved children and those who were
and are dear to me on earth. I think of
death with composure and perfect confidence in the mercy of God.
Yet to me, who I am afraid to sleep alone
on a stormy night, or even to sleep comfortably any

(28:10):
night unless someone is near, It is a fearful thought
that my spirit must enter that new state of existence
quite alone. But even after this somewhat melancholy passage, she
also wrote of how excited she was to incorporate the
latest information about China, Japan, South Africa, and Australia into
physical geography. There also is we should note some pretty

(28:35):
cringey pro colonization rhetoric involved in this. Her work was
always a place of solace, and even her final years,
she was actively engaged with not just her work but
also social causes. And in particular the effort to get
animal welfare laws passed in Italy. She notes in her memoir, however,

(28:55):
that as she turned ninety two, she was quote extremely
deaf and struggling to rem member things like people's names,
but noted that while her memory had dulled, it had
quote not for mathematical and scientific subjects. I am still
able to read books on the higher algebra for four
or five hours in the morning, and even to solve

(29:15):
the problems. Sometimes I find them difficult, but my old
obstinacy remains, for if I do not succeed today, I
attack them again on themorrow. I also enjoy reading about
all the new discoveries and theories in the scientific world
and on all branches of science. Like may my life
model on this. In eighteen seventy nine, Somerville College at

(29:39):
Oxford was founded as a ladies college, and it was
named to honor Mary. This started out just as a
hall with limited access to lectures for the enrolled women,
but over time it has evolved into a co ed institution.
It's often pointed to as a place where a lot
of progressive ideas, particularly in terms of rights for women,
have been champion and then battled out, and that is

(30:01):
still a college today. So there they all know her name,
and that is Mary Somerville, who I found quite refreshing
after all of our kind of downer stuff we've been discussing. Yeah,
I love her. I really really liked her heap. She
was so fun to write about and to research on

(30:24):
because her writing is really really excellent. There are times
when you read older manuscripts from people in like the
Victorian era, and it's also stilted that it's really hard
to like connect to, but her writing I see why
she was a great science communicator because she was completely
able to like make it all very casual and make
sense and not so academic as to be stuffy. She's

(30:47):
very good at it. And I have a really fun
listener mail. This listener mail is from our listener Christopher,
who starts out Diritt from Dublin, which I probably said
very poorly. I wanted to write in with a not
quite correction on your Jack a Lantern episode, which I
very much enjoyed. You mentioned several times the Irish tradition

(31:08):
of carving turnips into lanterns, which is true. However, turnip
in Ireland does not mean the same thing as it
does elsewhere. Most people know that England and America have
different names for some vegetables, like the eggplant versus the aubergine.
One of these is what most Americans call a route bega.
In England it's called a swede, in Scotland it's called

(31:29):
a nap, and in Ireland it is called a turnip,
what other people call turnups. The Irish mostly called white turnips.
I suspect that Irish historians use the word turnip in
writing about vegetable carving traditions, and others assumed they meant
turnips as they understood them. So now most sources talk
about turnups without specifying whether they mean Anglo American turnips,

(31:50):
the brassica rappa or Irish turnips brassica napus aka rutebega
or swede. So if you ever looked at the tiny
turnups in an American or English shop and why anyone
would bother carving one, the answer is that most of
them were probably larger and more head shaped rude vegas.
Thanks love the podcast, Chris. This is a wonderful context

(32:12):
that I did not know at all. A me, it
also makes sense, I mean in my head This may
not be in any way connected because rude bigas are
a little bit sweeter than turnips, So the transition to oh,
we could carve this other sweet squash once people had
come to America may have been a more natural transition. Yeah.

(32:32):
This also reminded me. It's not quite the same thing,
but it reminded me a little bit of We were
talking about like one of the very old cookbooks on
the show at one point, and there was some kind
of squash type vegetable, some kind of gourd maybe that
had been translated really consistently as pumpkin, but there weren't

(32:53):
pumpkins in Europe, right, and it was just one of
those things that kind of picked up and proliferated, is
like pumpkin, even though that was a different thing. Yeah. Yeah. Also,
Christopher sent one of my favorite pictures of all time
in the Pet Tax, because it features his tortoiseshell cat
Ginger and Ruby, who is a Devon Rex, which is

(33:17):
my favorite breed of cats. My beloved mister Burns was
the Devon Rex. Ruby has the devon Rex stare that
looks very grumpy but is probably very cuddly and sweet.
This is your babies are beautiful, Christopher. I want to
kiss them both if they would be into it. This
makes me so excited now I kind of want to
go get rudebiga in carb it. If you would like

(33:44):
to write to us, you can do so at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us
on social media as Missed in History Listen. If you
carve rudabagas or turn ups, you share those pictures over there.
We want them, and you can also subscribe to the
podcast if you have already on the iHeartRadio app or
anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed

(34:10):
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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