Mary Somerville (née Fairfax, formerly Greig; 1780–1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In John Stuart Mill's 1866 mass petition to the UK Parliament to grant women the right to vote, the first signature on the petition was Somerville's, which she signed before the age of 86.
When she died in 1872, The Morning Post declared in her obituary that "Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science". The first use of the word "scientist" in the English language was in a review by William Whewell of Somerville's second book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Beyond her work as a scientist, she is known and celebrated as a mathematician and philosopher.
Somerville College, a college of the University of Oxford, is named after her, reflecting the virtues of liberalism and academic success that the college wished to embody. She is featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017 along with a quotation from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.
Somerville, the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother, Margaret Charters. She was born on 26 December 1780 at the manse of Jedburgh, the home of her maternal aunt and the Rev. Dr. Thomas Somerville (1741–1830) (author of My Own Life and Times). Her childhood home was at Burntisland, Fife, where her mother was from.
Somerville was the second of four surviving children (three of her siblings had died in infancy). She was particularly close to her oldest brother Sam. The family lived in genteel poverty as her father's naval pay remained meagre, despite his rise through the ranks. Her mother supplemented the household's income by growing vegetables, maintaining an orchard and keeping cows for milk. Her mother taught her to read the Bible and Calvinist catechisms. When her household chores were done, Mary was free to roam among the birds and flowers in the garden.
In her autobiography, Somerville recollects that on her father's return from sea he said to his wife, "This kind of life will never do, Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts". Ten-year-old Mary was then sent to an expensive boarding school in Musselburgh, where she learned the first principles of writing, rudimentary French and English grammar. Upon returning home, she:
...was no longer amused in the gardens, but wandered about the country. When the tide was out I spent hours on the sands, looking at the star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for sand-eels, cockles, and the spouting razor-fish. I made collections of shells, such as were cast ashore, some so small that they appeared like white specks in patches of black sand. There was a small pier on the sands for shipping limestone brought from the coal mines inland. I was astonished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large pieces, and brought them to my repository.
During bad weather, Somerville occupied herself with reading the books in her father's library, including Shakespeare, as well as with "domestic duties." Such duties "occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to shew my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as the ten numbers, on canvas". Her aunt Janet came to live with the family and reportedly said to her mother "I wonder you let Mary waste her time in reading, she never shews [sews] more than if she were a man." Somerville was then sent to the village school to learn plain needlework, where she found herself annoyed that her "turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it." The village school master came several time each week to teach Mary at home. In her Personal Recollections, Somerville notes that the boys learned Latin at the village school, while "it was thought sufficient for the girls to be able to read the Bible; very few even learnt writing."
When she was 13, her mother sent her to writing school in Edinburgh, where she improved her writing skills and studied arithmetic. Back in Burntisland she taught herself sufficient Latin to read the books in the home library. While visiting her aunt in Jedburgh, she met her uncle, Dr. Thomas Somerville. She gathered her courage to tell him that she had been learning Latin. Dr. Somerville assured her that in earlier times many women had become elegant scholars. He then proceeded to enable her to improve her Latin by reading Virgil with her. While staying with another uncle, William Charters, in Edinburgh, Somerville was sent to a dancing school, where she learned manners and how to curtsey. She also accompanied her uncle and aunt on their visits to the Lyell family in Kinnordy; Charles Lyell later became a celebrated geologist and Somerville's friend.
Somerville's father was a Tory, but she was a Liberal, made so by the "unjust and exaggerated abuse of the Liberal party. From my earliest years my mind revolved against oppression and tyranny, and I resented the injustice of the world in denying all those privileges of education to my sex which were so lavishly bestowed on men." At the time, slaves still worked to harvest sugar in the West Indies and in protest Somerville and her oldest brother Sam would refuse to take sugar in their tea.
At Burntisland, where she stayed the summer with her uncle and aunt, Somerville had access to elementary books on algebra and geometry. She spent the summer learning to play the piano. In addition to the piano, she learned Greek so she could read Xenophon and Herodotus in their original versions. On her return to Edinburgh she was allowed to attend the academy of painter Alexander Nasmyth, which had opened for ladies. When Nasmyth advised another student to study Euclid's Elements to gain a foundation in perspective, astronomy and mechanical science, Somerville spotted an opportunity. She thought the book would help her understand Navigations by John Robertson.
She continued in the traditional role of a daughter in a well-connected family, attending social events and maintaining a sweet and polite manner, which led to her nickname as "the Rose of Jedburgh" among Edinburgh socialites. Meanwhile, a young tutor came to stay with the family in Burntisland to educate her younger brother Henry. The tutor, Mr. Craw, was a Greek and Latin scholar, and Somerville asked him to purchase elementary books on algebra and geometry for her. He presented Somerville with Euclid's Elements and Algebra by John Bonnycastle. Somerville would rise early to play the piano, painted during the day, and stayed up late to study Euclid and algebra. When Lord Balmuto, a family friend, invited her to visit his family, Somerville saw her first laboratory. She also spent some time with the Oswalds family in Dunnikeir, whose daughter, a bold horsewoman who impressed Somerville, became a Greek and Latin scholar and married Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.
Winters were usually spent in Edinburgh. In the winter of 1796, Somerville made her first appearance at a ball under the care of Lady Buchan. Her first dancing partner was the Earl of Minto.
In the autumn of 1797, her father was caught up in a mutiny while serving as flag-captain under Admiral Duncan on HMS Venerable. Despite the mutiny, the Battle of Camperdown was won by the British. Her father was knighted and made Colonel of Marines. Her eldest brother died at the age of 21 in Calcutta while serving in the East India Company's military service. The family had hoped he would make a sufficient fortune in a few years to enable him to return home.