Pandora's Breeches by Patricia Fara

Author:Patricia Fara
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446435168
Publisher: Random House

Chapter 8

Caroline Herschel/William Herschel

Is it not then more wise as well as more honourable to move contentedly in the plain path which Providence has obviously marked out to the sex, and in which custom has for the most part rationally confirmed them, than to stray awkwardly, unbecomingly, and unsuccessfully, in a forbidden road? . . . Is the author then undervaluing her own sex? – No. It is her zeal for their true interests which leads her to oppose their imaginary rights.

Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1799

February 1828: an unusual meeting is taking place at London’s Astronomical Society. The Vice-President, James South, is discussing William Herschel, the astronomer most famous for discovering the planet Uranus. ‘Who participated in his toils?’ asks South in mock-astonishment. ‘Who braved with him the inclemency of the weather? Who shared his privations? A female – Who was she? His sister.’ Although much of his speech is about William, South is about to award a coveted gold medal to this sister, Caroline Herschel (1750–1848). (Conveniently, she is far away in Germany, so South has not had to confront the question of whether she should be invited into this male enclave to receive her prize.) Caroline Herschel has discovered eight comets and several nebulae, but South admires her for the calculations she carried out on William Herschel’s observations, for her ‘unconquerable industry’ in helping her brother.1

February 1835: seven years later, and the Royal Astronomical Society is in a quandary. Should they make Caroline Herschel an honorary member, even though she is a woman? After much debate, they vote to admit her, arguing that old-fashioned prejudice should not stand in the way of paying tribute to achievement. They formulate what is perhaps the first statement of equal opportunities in science: ‘while the tests of astronomical merit should in no case be applied to the works of a woman less severely than to those of a man, the sex of the former should no longer be an obstacle to her receiving any acknowledgement which might be held due to the latter’.2 The language may be outdated, but the sentiments are modern.

Caroline Herschel was rewarded not for her own discoveries, but because she recorded, compiled and recalculated her brother’s observations. She was ‘his amanuensis’, reported South, thus consigning her to the scientific margins. South described how, after a night’s work together at the telescope, William observing and Caroline recording, it was Caroline who spent the morning copying out the readings neatly. And it was Caroline who performed the calculations, arranged everything systematically, planned the next day’s schedule and collated their observations in publishable form.

In some ways, Caroline and William Herschel’s astronomical partnership resembles the family craft traditions in Germany a hundred years earlier. Like Elisabetha Hevelius and Maria Kirch, Caroline Herschel was acknowledged to be highly competent, but her achievements were concealed behind the name of the man in the family. Yet there were also significant differences. Most obviously perhaps, the Herschel family was known

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