The Lockdown Chronicles 15: Mary

Click on the image below to read the comic strip in full size. Sources and references on this post under the comic strip below.

Mary Somerville (née Fairfax, formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish science writer and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel. In 1819 her husband was appointed physician to Chelsea Hospital and the family moved to Hanover Square into a government house in Chelsea. Somerville was a friend of Anne Isabella Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth, and was mathematics tutor to her daughter, Ada Lovelace. With Somerville, Ada attended the scientific gatherings where she met Charles Babbage. [Wikipedia entry]

Text adapted from Somerville, Mary [1780–1872] On the connexion of the physical sciences (1834). London: J. Murray. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark; Somerville, Martha (1873). Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville: With Selections from Her Correspondence. London: J. Murray. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.

Source image: Mary Somerville [Fairfax]. Stipple engraving by W. Holl, 1858, after J. R. Swinton, 1848.Wellcome Library no. 8891i; Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. This comic strip CC-BY-NC-SA.

References

Somerville, Mary (1834) On the connexion of the physical sciences. London: J. Murray. Wellcome Collection. Available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/t8qef4k4 [Accessed 29 April 2020]

Somerville, Martha (1873) Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville: With Selections from Her Correspondence. London: J. Murray. Wellcome Collection. Available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/we9qcvzx [Accessed 29 April 2020]

Mary Somerville [Fairfax]. Stipple engraving by W. Holl, 1858, after J. R. Swinton, 1848.Wellcome Library no. 8891i; Wellcome Collection. Available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/uww3svfm [Accessed 29 April 2020]

 

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The Lockdown Chronicles is a series of periodical comic strips made at night (in candlelight!) adapting and reusing openly-licensed or public domain items from online digital collections. Publication and tweetage are scheduled in advance. Historical sources are adapted and updated for the current pandemic; please refer to each strip’s references on each post for further context.  Catch up with the series at https://epriego.blog/tag/the-lockdown-chronicles/.