Among the contemporaries of Jeanne Dumée were two other women who gained more than ordinary distinction by their attainments in astronomy. These were Mme. de la Sablière, in France, and Maria Margaret Kirch, of Germany.
Mme. de la Sablière evinced from an early age a special aptitude for science, especially for physics and astronomy. She studied mathematics under the eminent mathematician, Roberval, and at the age of thirty was famous. Her home became the resort of learned and eminent men, including some of the most noted characters of the age. Among these was Sobieski, King of Poland. But it is as the friend and protectress of La Fontaine and as the object of Boileau's satire that she is best known.
For a woman to devote herself to the study of science so soon after the appearance of Molière's Les Femmes Savantes argued more than ordinary courage. But for her to become distinguished for her scientific acquirements was almost tantamount to defying public opinion. The great majority of men had come to regard learned women in the same light as those who were so mercilessly derided in the Précieuses Ridicules; and they had, accordingly, no hesitation in treating them as unbearable pedants. No one could have made less parade of her learning than Mme. de la Sablière, or striven more successfully to conceal her admirable gifts. But this was not sufficient. She was known to have devoted special study to science, particularly to astronomy, and this was sufficient to make her the target of the satirists of her time.
By an act that wounded the self-love of Boileau this Venus Urania, as she has been called, soon found herself the victim of the satirist's well-directed shafts. The poet does not name her, but refers to her as
"Cette savante
Qu'estime Roberval et que Sauveur fréquente——"
this learned woman whom Roberval esteems and whom Sauveur frequents. And with the view of pricking the object of his spleen in her most sensitive part, he tells, in his Satire contre les Femmes, how she, with astrolabe in hand, spends her nights in making observations of the planet Jupiter and how this occupation has had the effect of weakening her sight and ruining her complexion.[138]
Mme. de la Sablière does not, however, seem to have been greatly perturbed by the ungracious effusions of the satirist, for she continued her cultivation of astronomy as before the poet's ill-natured outburst. She probably found ample compensation in the writings of La Fontaine, who addressed her as his muse and proclaimed her as one in whom were combined manly beauty and feminine grace—beauté d'homme avec grace de femme.
Maria Kirch, born at Panitch, near Leipsic, in 1670, was the wife of a Berlin astronomer, Gottfried Kirch. After her marriage she, like her three sisters-in-law, became her husband's pupil in astronomy. In 1702, as his assistant in observations and calculations, she was fortunate enough to discover a comet. She was the friend of Leibnitz, and was by him presented to the court of Prussia. It is a matter of regret to those of her own sex that this comet was not, as it should have been, named after its discoverer.
The death of Herr Kirch, which took place in 1710, caused no interruption in Frau Kirch's astronomical occupations. Among the evidences of her activity is a work which she wrote in 1713 on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the year following. In our day the conjunction of planets is for the laity a mere matter of curiosity, while for professional astronomers it is quite devoid of particular interest. But it was not so in the time of Maria Kirch, for then astronomy was so intimately associated with astrology that mankind attributed to such special positions of the planets a certain occult and capricious influence on the destiny of the earth and its inhabitants. As theoretical astronomy progressed, such erroneous notions were abandoned, because it was then recognized that the conjunction of the superior planets was not something fortuitous, but something that was reproduced at fixed periods by the known movements of these bodies. Writers on the subject made it a point to warn the public that they had nothing in common with astrologers. Among these was Christopher Thurm, who published a work on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1681. Similarly, the book of Maria Kirch contains only astronomical calculations and nothing more—a fact that redounds to the honor of the author and to the age in which she lived.
The daughters of Maria Kirch, even long after their mother's death, continued to occupy themselves with astronomy. They calculated for the Berlin Academy of Sciences its Almanac and Ephemeris, which were among the sources of revenue of this learned body.