Herschel, Caroline Lucretia, 1750-1848

Caroline Lucretia Herschel[1] (/ˈhɜːrʃəl, ˈhɛər-/;[2] 16 March 1750 – 9 January 1848) was a German-born British astronomer,[3] whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name.[4] She was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked throughout her career.

She was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and the first woman in England to hold a government position.[5][6] She was also the first woman to publish scientific findings in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,[7] to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with Mary Somerville). She was named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838). The King of Prussia presented her with a Gold Medal for Science on the occasion of her 96th birthday (1846).[8]

Early life
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in the town of Hanover Germany on 16 March 1750. She was the eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaak Herschel (1707–1767), a self-taught oboist, and his wife, Anna Ilse Moritzen (1710–1789). The Herschel family originated from Pirna in Saxony, near Dresden.At the age of ten Caroline was struck with a severe case of typhus which stunted her growth, such that she never grew taller than 4 feet 3 inches (1.30 m).[4] She suffered vision loss in her left eye as a result of her illness.[10] Her family assumed that she would never marry and her mother felt it best that she train to be a house servant[12] rather than become educated in accordance with her father's wishes. Following her father's death, her brothers William and Alexander proposed that she join them in Bath, England to have a trial period as a singer for musician brother William's church performances.[8][9] Caroline eventually left Hanover on 16 August 1772 after her brother's intervention with their recalcitrant mother.[9][13] On the journey to England, she was first introduced to astronomy by way of the constellations and opticians' shops.[9]
In Bath, she took on the responsibilities[14] of running William's household, and began learning to sing.[13] William had established himself as an organist and music teacher at 19 New King Street, Bath (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy). He was also the choirmaster of the Octagon Chapel.[10] William was busy with his musical career and became fairly busy organising public concerts.
In Bath, she took on the responsibilities[14] of running William's household, and began learning to sing.[13] William had established himself as an organist and music teacher at 19 New King Street, Bath (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy). He was also the choirmaster of the Octagon Chapel.[10] William was busy with his musical career and became fairly busy organising public concerts. She became a significant astronomer in her own right as a result of her collaboration with him.[4] The Herschels moved to a new house in March 1781 after their millinery business failed, and Caroline was guarding the leftover stock on 13 March, the night that William discovered the planet Uranus. Though he mistook it for a comet, his discovery proved the superiority of his new telescope. Caroline and William gave their last musical performance in 1782, when her brother accepted the private office of court astronomer to King George III; the last few months of their musical career had been a shambles and were critically panned.[9][18]

After her brother died in 1822, Caroline was grief-stricken and moved back to Hanover, Germany, continuing her astronomical studies to verify and confirm William's findings and producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist her nephew John Herschel in his work. [36] Her nephew thought highly of her, in fact he was quoted in 1832 as saying “She runs about the town with me and skips up her two flights of stairs as wonderfully fresh at least as some folks I could name who are not a fourth of her age… In the morning till eleven or twelve she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite ‘fresh and funny’ at ten or eleven p.m. and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances to the great delight of all who see her." John Herschel spent long periods with his aunt during the vacations and was greatly influenced by Caroline. She saw him educated at Cambridge, make a name for himself as a mathematician, become elected to the Royal Society, join his father in research in astronomy and be awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his achievements. Caroline continued to assist William with his observations but her status had greatly improved from the housekeeper she had been in her young days. She was the guest of Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory in 1799 and a guest of members of the Royal Family at various times in 1816, 1817 and 1818. However, her observations were hampered by the architecture in Hanover, and she spent most of her time working on the catalogue.[13] In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society presented her with their Gold Medal for this work—no woman would be awarded it again until Vera Rubin in 1996.[37] Upon William's death, her nephew, John Herschel, took over observing at Slough. Caroline had given him his first introduction into astronomy, when she showed him the constellations in Flamsteed's Atlas. Caroline added her final entry to her observing book on 31 January 1824 about the Great Comet of 1823, which had already been discovered on 29 December 1823.[23] Throughout the twilight of her life, Caroline remained physically active and healthy, and regularly socialized with other scientific luminaries.[13] She spent her last years writing her memoirs and lamenting her body's limitations, which kept her from making any more original discoveries.[11]

Caroline Herschel died peacefully in Hanover on 9 January 1848. She is buried at 35 Marienstrasse in Hanover at the cemetery of the Gartengemeinde, next to her parents and with a lock of William's hair.[13] Her tombstone inscription reads, "The eyes of her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens."[35] With her brother, she discovered over 2,400 astronomical objects over twenty years.[13]

BIOGRAPHIES Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel
German astronomer

born March 16, 1750 in Hannover
died January 9, 1848 in HannoverBIOGRAPHY
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Caroline Lucretia Herschel was the first woman to receive full recognition in the field of astronomy. She grew up in Hanover, the only girl among five surviving children of the military musician Isaak Herschel and his wife Anna Ilse Herschel. Against the wishes of her mother, who would have preferred her to be a seamstress, Caroline, like her brothers, received musical training and became a concert singer.

Caroline HerschelWhen she was 22 she followed her brother Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (her elder by twelve years) to England, where he was an organist and conductor in the elegant city of Bath. He needed her as his housekeeper, but also gave her the opportunity to appear as a soloist in his concerts. Soon she had gained the position of first singer, assumed a managerial role in the chorus and received offers to perform in other cities. She would surely have had a great musical career had she not followed her brother's passion for astronomy. Without doubt this was an unusual family, these Herschels from Hanover, among whom great gifts, even double talents (music and astronomy) were apparently the rule: Alexander, also a musician, served as well as an astronomer in brother Wilhelm's family business of studying the skies.

In addtition to running the household and her appearances as a singer, Caroline now devoted herself to astronomy; for example she helped Wilhelm produce reflecting telescopes. Her main duty consisted in grinding and polishing the mirrors – a task that required absolute accuracy. Besides such practical activites however, she occupied herself with astronomical theory. She mastered algebra and formulas for calculation and conversion as a basis for observing the stars and measuring astronomical distances.

The great breakthrough came for Caroline Herschel in 1781, the year the planet Uranus was discovered, which her brother had found more or less by chance when surveying the stars. This discovery led to his international fame: in addition to numerous honors he was offered a position as royal astronomer to the court at Windsor which he gratefully accepted. Now he was able to dedicate himself entirely to his true passion.

Caroline Herschel now faced a choice: whether to continue her career as a singer or to “serve” her brother as his scientific assistent. She chose the latter and was appointed by the court as a qualified assistant with a salary of 50 pounds per year – the first salary that a woman had ever received for scientific work.

Now Caroline began her own astronomical research, specializing in the search for comets. Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered eight of them. Whole nights through she worked with her brother observing the heavens, noting the positions of the stars as he called them to her from the other end of the giant telescope that they had built themselves. She evaluated the nocturnal notations and recalculated them, wrote treatises for Philosophical Transactions, discovered fourteen nebulae, calculated hundreds more, and began a catalogue for star clusters and nebular patches. In addition she compiled a supplemental catalogue to Flamsteeds Atlas which included 561 stars, as well as a comprehensive index to it. For this work she was paid the highest tribute by Gauss and Encke, among others. Nonetheless she remained the (excessively?) modest woman she had always been.

In 1822, a few short weeks after her brother's death, Caroline Herschel returned to her home city of Hanover, which she had left as a young woman almost fifty years earlier. The world's most important scientists sought her out in her simple house on Marktstraße. She was awarded numerous honors – for example in 1828 the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, of which she was named an honorary member in 1835. In 1838 the Royal Irish Academy of Sciences in Dublin appointed the 88-year-old Caroline Herschel to its number. And in 1846, at the age of 96, she was awarded, on behalf of the King of Prussia, the gold medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

None of the comets she discovered was named after her, but a crater of the moon bears the name Caroline Herschel.

transl. Joey Horsley

Author: Julie Schröder