Three years after this splendid recognition of Miss Herschel's astronomical labors she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy.
But exceptional as were the honors conferred on her by sovereigns and learned societies, none of them afforded her the extreme satisfaction that she experienced on the receipt of a copy, shortly before her death, of her nephew's epochal Cape Observations; for, as has well been said, "nothing in the power of man to bestow could have given such pleasure on her death-bed as this last crowning completion of her brother's work." We are told that a copy, just from the press, of his immortal work, De Orbium Celestium Revolutionibus, in which he had established the heliocentric theory of the planetary system, was placed in the hands of Copernicus on the day of his death, just a few hours before he expired. He seemed conscious of what it was; but, after touching it and contemplating it for a moment, he lapsed into a state of insensibility which soon terminated in death. With Miss Herschel the case was different. Although in her ninety-seventh year, she still retained possession of all her faculties and was fully able to appreciate the volume which told of the crowning of her brother's life work—a volume which must have given her additional satisfaction when she recalled her fifty years of loyal service at her brother's side as his associate and ministering angel in the greatest work ever undertaken by a single man in the history of astronomy.
Caroline Herschel died at the advanced age of ninety-seven years and ten months, retaining to the last her interest in astronomy which had occupied her mind for more than three-quarters of a century.
Her epitaph, composed by herself, is engraved on a heavy stone slab which covers her grave and contains the following words: "The eyes of her who is glorified were here below turned to the starry heavens. Her own discoveries of comets and her participation in the immortal labors of her brother, William Herschel, bear witness of this to future ages."
Space precludes any extended reference to Miss Herschel's distinguished associate in the Royal Astronomical Society, Mrs. Somerville, whose masterly translation and exposition of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste secured for her so enviable a place among the mathematicians of her time, and placed all English students of mathematical astronomy under such deep obligations. It is true that she ever manifested a lively interest in celestial phenomena; but it is rather as a mathematician than as an astronomer that she will be remembered by the devotees of science.
The first American woman to win distinction in astronomy was Miss Maria Mitchell. Born in the island of Nantucket in 1818, she, at an early age, displayed remarkable talent for astronomy and mathematics. Her first instructor was her father, who, besides being a school teacher, had from his youth been an enthusiastic student of astronomy, and that, too, at a time when very little attention was given to its study in this country, and when the observatory of Harvard College consisted of only a little projection to an old mansion in Cambridge, in which there was a small telescope.
At the age of thirteen little Maria counted seconds by the chronometer for her father while he observed the annular eclipse of the sun in 1831; and from that time on she was his assiduous co-worker in the study of the heavens. After teaching school for some years, she became the librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position which she held for nearly twenty years. Here she continued the study of her favorite science, and read all the books on astronomy which she could obtain. It was during this period that she read Bowditch's translation of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste and Gauss's Theoria Motus Corporum Cælestium in the original.
On the evening of October 1, 1847, she was the discoverer of a comet that attracted great attention because it secured for her a medal offered by the King of Denmark in 1831 for the first one who should discover a telescopic comet. The same comet was observed by Father de Vico in Rome two days subsequently, by Dawes in England on October seventh, and by Madame Rümker, wife of the director of the observatory of Hamburg, on the eleventh of the same month. As there was no Atlantic cable in those days, it was not known who was the fortunate winner of the prize until nearly a year afterward, when word was received from Denmark announcing that the priority of Miss Mitchell's discovery had been recognized and that she would be the recipient of the prize, which, for a while, it was thought would go to De Vico or Madame Rümker.[149]
In 1849 Miss Mitchell was appointed a compiler for the Nautical Almanac, a position she held for nineteen years. During the same period she was employed by the United States Coast Survey.
When Vassar College was opened in 1865 for the higher education of women, Miss Mitchell was called to fill the chair of astronomy and to be the first director of the observatory. In this position she soon succeeded in giving astronomy a prominence that it never had had before in any other college for women, and in but few for men.