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Caroline Herschel was a woman astronomer and scientist that lived during both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is best known for her major contribution to the study of comets.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany on March 16, 1750, the daughter of Isaac and Anna Isle Moritzen Herschel. Her father, Isaac, was a gardener by trade to support his family, but he was also a clever musician, an oboist in the Hanovarian Foot Guards, rising to the position of bandmaster. Although he had no formal education, he strove to educate his four sons and two daughters and encouraged them all to learn mathematics, French, and music. Anna, however, looked upon education with disdain. While she reluctantly accepted that her four sons should receive some education, she strongly objected to her daughters receiving any education beyond that of basic housekeeping. While her brothers were all raised to be musicians, Caroline had a thirst for knowledge that her father tried to satisfy, despite her mother’s strong opposition.
Tragedy struck Caroline at the age of ten and she contracted Typhus, which stunted her growth so that she never grew past four foot three inches tall. Because of her deformity, her father told her that she would never marry and would live out her life without a mate. This prediction became true, but she had many lifelong friends and admirers.
When she was twenty-two years old, she went to England to join her brother William at Bath. Here she began to study astronomy, giving great assistance to her brother, not only taking the part of an amanuensis, but often performing the tedious and complicated calculations involved in the observations. In 1781, William became famous for discovering the planet now named Uranus. Because of this, King George III gave William a yearly salary sufficient to allow him to become a full-time astronomer. Because of her valuable assistance to the great astronomer, King George III also gave Caroline a pension.
Caroline took many separate observations of the heavens with a small Newtonian telescope that William had given her. With this she devoted herself particularly to a search after comets. Between 1718 and 1805, Caroline discovered eight comets, five of which she was the first observer. Her contributions to science, most of them in her brother’s works and under his name, are invaluable. In 1798 she published her “Catalogue of Stars”, taken from Mr. Flamsteed’s observations.
After William’s death, Caroline returned to Hanover, Germany where she spent the rest of her life. In 1828 she completed a catalogue of the nebulae and stars observed by her brother, for which she received a gold medal from the Astronomical Society of London, and was elected an honorary member of it.
In 1847, Caroline celebrated her ninety-seventh birthday, receiving many visits from royal guests and many gifts. In fact, the King of Prussia sent her the gold medal awarded for the “extension of the sciences”. She died in 1848 at the age of 98.
A minor planet was named Lucretia in 1889 in honor of Caroline Lucretia Herschel, a fitting tribute to this fine woman who shunned personal ambition and directed the praise towards others.
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