Women pioneers and the Royal Society

The aristocrat Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), was the first woman to be allowed to attend a meeting of the Royal Society (along with her female attendants).

On 30 May 1667, Cavendish saw demonstrations 'of colours, loadstones, microscopes and of liquors' and experiments of the air pump by Robert Boyle (1627-1691).

Margaret Cavendish had long moved in intellectual circles before becoming the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society.

Cavendish’s several works of natural philosophy were informed by, and sometimes reacted against, readings of savants such as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) or most notably of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) and his Micrographia. The verdict of the President of the Royal Society, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), was simple: ‘I do not like her at all’.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) had seen smallpox inoculations performed in Constantinople. Montagu believed passionately in its protective effects and participated in the first campaign of inoculation in Britain, performed on her own daughter Mary.

She quickly persuaded Queen Caroline, wife of George II, to follow suit – but not before testing on inmates of Newgate Prison.

The archive shows here the record of the inoculation of Lady Montagu's daughter (Mary), by Charles Maitland (1668–1748).

The Royal Society initiated the successful campaign of inoculation against small pox which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had called for.

Mock suns are a relatively common phenomena, but this 1733 paper is highly unusual in that its author was a woman.

Martha Gerrish (1689-1736) acknowledged that her paper would have a greater chance of acceptance if it were in a masculine hand.

Forwarded to the Royal Society from America, the information it contained was read, but not published.

The first woman to publish a formal article in the scientific periodical of the Royal Society was the astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750-1848).

Before her 'Account of a new comet' appeared in the Philosophical Transactions in 1787, several women like Martha Gerrish had corresponded with the editors and some of those letters had been published.

Caroline Herschel charted hitherto unknown nebulae, eight different comets and mapped clusters of stars. A skillful and patient observer, she also had the analytical eye to identify astronomical structures.

First known for her mathematical prowess, Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780-1872) wrote on astronomy, geography, microscopy and other topics.

According to her contemporary the American astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), she was the most learned woman in Europe.

Published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, this paper by Mary Somerville was communicated by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).

It recounts her solar experiments in Rome on paper sensitised by a variety of plant extracts.

Somerville first published with the Royal Society some twenty years prior to this paper, in 1826, on the relationship between light and magnetism.

Mary Somerville also published popular science books to bring science to a wider audience.

Louisa Tyndall née Hamilton (1845-1940) was the working partner of the physicist John Tyndall FRS (1820-1893) who set out the bases to understand global warming.

Although she is known to have aided her husband in the Royal Institution’s laboratory for 17 years, working on apparatus such as this one, she was not acknowledged in his printed work – a situation typical of the period.