Foreword Dr Brigitte Stenhouse

Throughout her long life, Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was recognised as an expert in scientific fields from chemistry to crystallography. She first made her name as a mathematician, reading advanced French mathematical books under the tutelage of the Edinburgh University professor John Playfair, and winning a medal engraved with her name for her solution to a puzzle printed in a periodical. Results of her scientific experiments were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and in notable journals in Scotland, France and the Netherlands. She enjoyed a successful writing career spanning nearly forty years, bringing widespread attention to recent scientific developments through her Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), and winning the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for her book Physical Geography (1848). On her death she was described as one of the most distinguished astronomers and philosophers of the nineteenth century.

In 1879, seven years after Mary Somerville died, a new college was founded to provide women with an Oxford University education. The founders sought a name which would reflect their aspirations for future students to be academically rigorous and valued for their intellectual contributions, landing, of course, on the name Somerville Hall (later College). Mary Somerville herself was an active supporter of women’s higher education. In 1862 she lent her name to a petition requesting that the University of London be opened to women (alas it was unsuccessful). Her extensive collection of mathematical and scientific books, many of which were gifted to her by their respective authors, was posthumously left to Girton College in Cambridge; Girton was the first residential college for the degree-level education of women.

Even though she spent the latter thirty years of her life moving between numerous Italian towns and cities, Mary Somerville amassed a significant collection of notebooks, manuscripts, and letters which bear witness to her personal and scientific lives. Her notebooks include drafts of solutions to mathematical puzzles found in periodicals; diary entries from her first European travels, especially her time in Paris; and notes taken during the preparation of her books. Her manuscripts contain drafts of two mathematical texts which were ultimately never published, alongside early versions of her autobiography which was posthumously released in 1873 as The Personal Recollections, from early life to old age, of Mary Somerville.

Mary Somerville was at the centre of an active and collaborative scientific community, and the thousands of letters that she saved form a “who’s who” of nineteenth-century British science. Clearly, Somerville recognised the value of this collection as she began to catalogue it herself, arranging letters alphabetically by author and adding her own short descriptions of correspondents with whom she was especially close. Somerville was also at the centre of a loving and relatively tight-knit family, and the collection features extensive correspondence covering family arrangements such as attempts to overcome long-lasting financial difficulties.

As Somerville’s children had no children of their own, responsibility for her papers passed to the Fairfax-Lucys, the descendants of Somerville’s brother. In 1965, after being stewarded by the Fairfax-Lucy family for nearly a century, a significant collection of items was deposited at the Bodleian Library on behalf of Somerville College, with a further deposit made in 1972. As can be seen in the Mary Somerville room, College has collected more than just written materials, holding numerous oil landscape paintings produced by Somerville and a cabinet full of shells.

Such a varied and immersive archive for a single person is a rare occurrence, and even more so for a scientific woman. Far more often, women appear in the archival collections of more-celebrated male relatives or collaborators. They are background characters rather than protagonists, emerging and disappearing with little fanfare, obscured by a married name – such as “Mrs John Smith” – or not named at all. Historical women are disadvantaged two-fold when it comes to their work in the sciences being documented. Not only are they less visible in personal papers, but they were predominantly excluded from formal scientific institutions and societies until well into the twentieth century. Their names are much sparser in publications, membership lists, or as winners of prestigious prizes. These limitations on archival sources continue to impact our understanding of the roles taken by women in the historical development of science and mathematics.

Hence the Mary Somerville Collection is an exciting and valuable resource for studying the history of science. Beyond illuminating the work done by Somerville herself, these papers demonstrate the vital role played by mixed-gender polite society – at private dinners and public balls – for the circulation of new ideas. It was in these spaces that Somerville accessed mathematical and scientific knowledge and forged a reputation for herself as an expert that she later relied on in her career as a scientific author. By transcribing items from this collection, they will become much more visible and accessible to researchers and showcase the many areas of historical inquiry on which Somerville’s letters touch. This is especially important for her mathematical work, most of which remained unpublished both in her lifetime and since.