Parlez: Du grand Newton n’étiez-vous point jaloux?”[[40]]
Astronomy has not only engaged the attention of multitudes of illustrious men, of every age and nation, but it has been patronized by great and enlightened princes and states; cultivated by men of genius and learning, of all ranks and professions; and celebrated by historians and poets.
This charming, as well as sublime and invaluable science, has also been studied, and even practically cultivated, by many celebrated women, in modern times. There are indeed circumstances connected with this innocent and engaging pursuit, that must render it very interesting to the fair sex. Some ladies have prosecuted this object with such success, as to acquire considerable distinction in the philosophical world. While, therefore, the meritorious transactions of men are held in grateful remembrance and frequently recorded in the annals of fame, it is due to justice and impartiality, that literary, scientific, and other attainments of the gentler sex, calculated for the benefit of civil society, should be alike commemorated. Among such then, as examples, may be named the following:—
Maria Cunitia (Kunitz,) daughter of a physician in Silesia, published Astronomical Tables, so early as the year 1650.
Maria-Clara, the daughter of Eimmart and wife of of Muller, both well-known astronomers, cultivated the same science.
Jane Dumée published, in the year 1680, Conversations (or Dialogues) on the Copernican System.
Maria-Margaretta Winckelman, wife of Godfrey Kirch, an astronomer of some distinction[[41]] who died in 1710, at the age of seventy-one years, worked at his Ephemerides, and carried on Astronomical Observations with her husband. This respectable woman discovered the Comet[[42]] of 1702, on the 20th of April in that year: she produced, in 1712, a Work on Astronomy; and died at Berlin, in the year 1720. Her three daughters continued, for thirty years, to employ themselves in Astronomical Observations, for the Almanacks of Berlin.
Elizabeth d’Oginsky Puzynina, Countess Puzynina and Castellane of Mscislau, in Poland, erected and richly endowed a magnificent Observatory at Wilna, in the year 1753; and in 1767, she added to this establishment a fund equivalent to twelve thousand (American) dollars, for the purpose of maintaining an observer and purchasing instruments. The king of Poland afterwards gave to this institution the title of a “Royal Observatory.”
The wife of the celebrated Hevelius was, likewise, an astronomer. Madame Hevelius made Observations along with her husband; and she is represented, in the Machina Cœlestis, as having been engaged in measuring distances.
In the century just passed, the Marchioness du Chatelet translated Newton: Besides whom,—