Ladies in the Scientific Revolution

Ladies in the Scientific RevolutionAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 1-12Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/532031 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 51 (1), 1-12 (1997)

LADIES IN THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

by

SIR ALAN COOK, F.R.S.

8 Wootton Way, Cambridge CB3 9LX, UK

INTRODUCTION

Two exhibitions were recently held in the Library of the Society, one on Women in Science and another on the Archives of the Scientific Revolution. The first did not go so far back as the scientific revolution, with one exception, the translation of Newton's Principia by the Marquise du Chatelet. Yet it was in the scientific revolution, conveniently taken as running from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, that women are first known to have engaged in natural philosophy. Eight ladies certainly had some part in the scientific revolution, not just as tricoteuses watching the heads roll, but themselves helping to bring down the guillotine upon Aristotelians, Cartesians, astrologers, hermetics and mystics.

The century of the scientific revolution was an exciting time in the arts as well as the sciences throughout Europe. Women appeared physically upon the stage as singers and actresses, and symbolically as playwrights and poets, novelists and belles lettristes, musicians and painters. Men were highly aware that a new age was dawning and women enjoyed it also; a few at least were not backward in intellectual innovation. They were part of the general effloresence of critical enquiry and artistic outburst.

A comet symbolizes the inception of the scientific revolution and another its achievement. That of 1654 attracted innumerable millenarian, mystical and hermetic speculations; the return of Halley's comet in 1759 was widely seen as the final confirmation of rational Newtonian mechanics. A lady of distinction is associated with each. Queen Christina of Sweden was very interested in the earlier comet and some think that her abdication and conversion to Roman Catholicism were influenced by its appearance. A century later Mme Lepaute, a Parisienne, organized the calculations by which the return of Halley's comet was successfully predicted. Between those two, six other ladies had some distinct part in the scientific revolution. All eight had some connection with Fellows of the Royal Society.

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© 1997 The Royal Society



Sir Alan Cook

KATHERINE LADY RANELAGH (1615-1691)

Lady Ranelagh was an older sister of Robert Boyle, by some 12 years.' She was married at 16 to Arthur Jones, the son of the first Viscount Ranelagh. Arthur Jones was said to have been brutal and drunken. His interests were entirely in Ireland and allowed Lady Ranelagh to move to London. He died in 1669 and she was a widow for more than 20 years. No recluse, she attracted a cultivated and influential circle of friends, Milton and Lucius Cary, and Lord Falkland among them. At the centre of a group of prominent Anglo- Irish parliamentarians, she was able to ensure that Boyle was left undisturbed in his Irish and English estates during the Commonwealth. After Boyle returned from the Continent to London in 1644, Katherine supported and encouraged him for the next 45 years.

Hartlib and Wilkins were among the parliamentary intellectuals whom Lady Ranelagh knew, and she probably introduced her young brother to them. After Cromwell became Protector, some of them settled in Oxford, in particular, Wallis, Ward, Wilkins and Wren; and Wilkins prevailed upon Boyle to move there also. So he did, in 1654, and began his long association with Hooke. Lady Ranelagh, with sisterly care, inspected the lodgings that he had chosen in Oxford. When in 1660 the foundation of the Royal Society was mooted, Boyle, though younger than the rest of the company, was one of the founding Fellows and was very active in the Society for the rest of his life. In that he owed his acquaintance with a number of the founders to his sister, she had a part in the conception and birth of the Society. She had another indirect influence on the early years of the Society, for Henry Oldenburg was chosen to be tutor to her son Richard (later Earl of Ranelagh and F.R.S.) and accompanied him to Europe in 1657. In that way Boyle and other founder Fellows of the Royal Society came to know Oldenburg

Lady Ranelagh lived in Pall Mall from 1660, in the sixth house from the St James's Palace end, probably the site of the easternmost section of the present Oxford and Cambridge United University Club. There, after some hesitation, Boyle joined her in 1668. Thomas Sydenham, the physician and colleague of John Locke, lived next door; Nell Gwynn had the house next but one, and Oldenburg and Sir William Temple also lived in Pall Mall. Robert Hooke, who owed so much to Boyle, was a friend of Lady Ranelagh, as was Christopher Wren.

Boyle in his own day was seen as the mentor of other natural philosophers, setting out clearly the principles on which a rational science should be built, for example:

That it enable a skilfull Naturalist to foretell future Phenomena by their Congruity or Incongruity to it; and especially the Events of such Experiments as are aptly devised to Examine it; as Things that ought or ought not to be Consequent to it.2

Lady Ranelagh was, so far as is known, no natural philosopher, her contribution to the scientific revolution was to introduce the youthful Boyle to older savants, such as Wallis and Wren. She gave him a London home to pursue his thoughts, his

experiments and his writing, she commented on them, and encouraged him in his

thinking and publishing. The two of them, always very close, kept open house for London society and natural philosophers.

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Ladies in the scientific revolution

Lady Ranelagh died in 1691 and Boyle followed her only a few days afterwards. In his funeral sermon on Boyle, Gilbert Bumet also delivered an encomium upon Lady Ranelagh: 'She had lived the longest on the most public scene and made the greatest figure in all the revolutions of these kingdoms for above fifty years, of any woman of that age.' She also had no inconsiderable part in the scientific revolution.

QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN (1629-1689)

Christina succeeded as Queen Regnant of Sweden when her father, Gustavus Adolphus, was killed at the Battle of Lutzen. She was exceedingly learned and keenly interested in theology, philosophy, astrology and alchemy. The depredations of the Swedish armies in German lands brought her many pictures, medals and sculptures. Her collection of

pictures was probably the finest in Europe when she lived in Rome. Some of her paintings are now in England, for instance the Venus and Cupid in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge and the Venus with a Shell in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. She corresponded with Gassendi and embraced his Epicurean philosophy and atomic theories, and she both corresponded with Descartes and invited him to Sweden, where he died from pneumonia. Her letters were not just chit-chat, she was able to tell Descartes that Plato had anticipated one of his supposedly original ideas.3

Christina abdicated and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1664. She moved to Rome and eventually lived in the Palazzo Riario, which, in the next century, was enlarged into the Palazzo Corsini. It is now the seat of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and Christina's principal apartments are the rooms of the President and other officers and the meeting rooms of the sections. Christina had her collections there and her musicians, instrumentalists and singers played there for her and her circle. There, an adept like Newton, she practised alchemy. She reassembled in Rome the Accademia Reale that she had formed in Sweden, and supported another academy, that of Ciampini at the Oratory of St Philip Neri in the church of Santa Maria in Valicella (the Chiesa Nuova). Those academies were not exclusively scientific, but the leading scientists belonged to them and Christina's regal patronage enabled them to pursue natural knowledge at a time of hostile ecclesiastical opinion.4

G.-D. Cassini had dedicated a book to Christina5 and when later he came to Rome, she asked to join him in observing the comet of 1664. He subsequently persuaded her to set up an observatory in the grounds of her palace (now the Botanic Gardens) and to support a programme of observations of the Medicean satellites of Jupiter to use as clocks for the determination of longitude. While so engaged in November 1680, Cellio and Pontio detected the great comet of that year as it approached the Sun. Edmond Halley saw it about the same time in England just before he set out for Paris, and he and his friend Robert Nelson saw its brilliant tail as they were on the road to Paris near Boulogne. They arrived in Paris on Christmas Eve and immediately after Christmas, whenever the nights were clear, Halley observed it with Cassini at the new Observatoire. Just before Halley left Paris in May 1681, Cassini gave him a copy of

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Sir Alan Cook

the pamphlet in which he had collected many other observations, including those made in Rome by Cellio, Pontio and Ciampini, and those by Gallet in Avignon. Halley left France at the end of the summer. He visited Gallet in Avignon and observed a lunar eclipse with him, and finally arrived in Rome in mid-October.

We know very little of how Halley spent his time in Rome, but one fairly secure guess may be made. Halley was far from unknown. Cassini in Paris and Hevelius in Danzig knew and admired the results of his expedition to St Helena to observe the southern stars. He came to Rome after having observed the great comet with Cassini. Cassini corresponded with Cellio and others in Rome, and quite possibly introduced Halley to them. Halley had observed a comet with Cassini just as Christina had 16 years before, he had attempted to calculate a path for the new comet, and Christina had offered a prize for such a calculation. Halley was just the sort of visitor to Rome who would attend Christina's academy and whom she would expect to call. It would be very surprising if Halley had not paid his respects at the Palazzo Riario.

Newton paid great attention to the comet of 1680 and its orbit in the Principia as the example of his treatment of orbits of comets under the attraction of the Sun. Halley, who returned from Rome early in 1682, could give him first-hand information of the observations by Cassini, Gallet and the Romans, with all of whom Christina was to a greater or less extent associated. Many ideas about comets were circulating in the courts of France and of Christina, and none was founded on any mechanical basis, but Halley eventually showed in his studies of comets that some had a basis in rational celestial mechanics.

There is another parallel between Halley's reputation and Christina's. Both came to be known as libertine in religious matters, not it seems because they were atheists or agnostics, but because they applied rational criticism to the scriptures and to doctrine. One reason for Christina's conversion to Roman Catholicism may have been her rejection of the uncritical acceptance of the scriptures by Swedish Lutherans. Halley, also, on a number of occasions tested scriptural accounts against natural science. Such ideas, along with Epicurean philosophy and atomic theories, were in the air in Christina's circle in Rome, but it would be too much to say that Halley acquired them from his visit, for they were quite widely spread.

ELIZABETH HEVELIUS

Johannes Hevelius of Danzig was the foremost astronomer of his day. He had made many significant observations, of the Moon, of comets and of planets, as well as of the stars. After his first wife died in 1662, he married the 16-year old Catherina Elisabetha (Elizabeth) Koopman, the daughter of another wealthy Danzig family.6 She was 32 years younger than he was. Elizabeth assisted him in his observations, one of a small group who did so.7 There is an engraving of the two of them at his Great Sextant in the first part of his Machina Coelestis (1673) in which he described his instruments. After Hevelius's death, Elizabeth edited and published his unfinished works, especially

4




FIGURE 1. Johannes Hevelius and Elizabeth Hevelius at the Large Sextant.

Figure M of Machina Coelestis of 1673.

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;-t t'::

'

5:

78 d

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Sir Alan Cook

the Prodromus Astronomiae (1695), with his catalogue of star positions and some new constellations he set up.

Hevelius made most of his observations before telescopes were used in astrometry. When the first part of the Machina Coelestis appeared, Robert Hooke criticized it severely for its out-of-date methods. Hevelius, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society, complained to the Society and asked that someone should compare his instruments with the new ones advocated by Hooke. After Halley returned from St Helena he was the obvious person to do this, for he had more practical experience of telescopic sights, eyepiece micrometers and accurate clocks, than anyone else. He went to Danzig in 1679 with the commendation of the Royal Society and took with him a small telescopic quadrant that he had had on St Helena. He spent about two months in Danzig from May to July 1679. Halley and Hevelius observed together, with two or three other of Hevelius's colleagues and, on one occasion, with Elizabeth Hevelius. Hevelius gave a full account of the visit in his Annus climactericus (1680).

The accounts in Annus climactericus and in earlier works of Hevelius show that the results of his instruments were reproducible to about 10 seconds of arc, but there were considerable systematic differences between them and Halley's quadrant. Furthermore, his clocks were certainly inferior to Flamsteed's at Greenwich and to those that Halley took to St Helena.

Halley returned to England with a commission from Elizabeth to have a silk gown and petticoat made for her in the latest London fashion. He continued to correspond with Hevelius, and their letters show that his visit was agreeable to them all. Some 34 years later, in 1713, a portrait of Halley by Thomas Murray was hung next to Hevelius in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, as Thomas Heare noted:

The picture of Dr Edmund Halley (Savilian Professor of Geometry) done exactly like him

by Mr Tho. Murray, who gave it, is lately placed in the Gallery of the Bodleian Library. It hangs by Hevelius whom Dr Halley when he was young, had visited at Dantzick, and for that reason, as well as his skill in Astronomy, Hevelius hath mentioned him in one of his books. And some Persons say that he is very justly placed by Hevelius, because he made him (as they give out) a Cuckold by lying with his Wife when he was at Dantzick, the said Hevelius having a very pretty Woman to his Wife, who had a very great kindness for Mr Halley and was (it seems) observed often to be familiar with him. But this story I am apt to think is false.8

The contemporary accounts and letters of Halley and Hevelius do not support the story. It may have come from Flamsteed. He was one of the few people still alive with direct

knowledge of Halley's visit, and in 1713 he had become bitterly hostile to Halley on account of the publication of his Greenwich observations and catalogue without his consent.

Elizabeth Hevelius was clearly as careful an observer as Hevelius and his other colleagues. She is the first known woman observer, a century before Caroline Herschel. She was most certainly involved in the scientific revolution, for she contributed to the improvement of astrometry at that time, even if the instruments with which she worked were becoming obsolete.

6




LADY MASHAM (1658-1708)

Damaris Masham was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, one of the group of theologians and philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists.9 Taught by her father, she was very learned. She first met John Locke in London about 1681 and thereafter was by far his closest friend. They had common philosophical and theological interests, and also exchanged most affectionate letters under the names of Philander and Philoclea. Locke fled to Holland after the Rye House Plot of 1683 and in 1685 Damaris married Sir Thomas Masham, whose youngest son by his first marriage married Abigail Hill, so influential at the court of Queen Anne. Sir Thomas and Damaris lived at Oates, in High Laver in Essex, near Harlow. When Locke returned to England in the wake of the invasion of William III, the Mashams gave him a home for the rest of his life; there Newton visited him on occasion. Locke died at Oates in 1704 while Lady Masham read the Psalms to him.

Lady Masham's philosophy was at first that of the Cambridge Platonists, but after she came to know Locke she largely adopted his empirical views, and seems to have contributed to some of his thoughts. She published theological works in which she defended his position in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, although she never completely abandoned the neo-Platonism of her father.10 As she once wrote to Locke, she had 'no ill opinion of Platonists (since I have spent most of my life among philosophers of that sect)'.1

Locke was no mathematician and had considerable difficulty with Newton's Principia, although he wrote a review of it in the Bibliotheque Universelle. Those who, like Leibniz, opposed Newton's natural philosophy, equally opposed Locke's philosophy; they saw both as leading to atheism. Lady Masham left a long memoir of Locke12 and wrote the article on him in the Great Historical Dictionary.

CATHERINE BARTON (1679-1739)

Catherine Barton was the daughter of Newton's step-sister, Hannah Barton. She was about 17 when she came to keep house for Newton in London on his appointment to the Mint. The Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Halifax, his friend from Trinity, had obtained Newton's appointment, and after Halifax's wife died in in 1698, Catherine began a relationship with him. A very great deal of ink has been spent on that relationship, whether or not it was irregular, and if so, whether Newton knew, or approved, of it. Few facts are sure. Halifax made an exceptionally large bequest to her in his will, and Newton seems to have taken no notice of the relationship, except presumably when Halifax died and Catherine asked if she should return to Newton. Newton also defended Catherine's interests under Halifax's will. It is not even known if Catherine ever lived in Halifax's house, for when Jonathan Swift, a close friend, dined with her alone on occasion in 1711, he did so in her lodgings. Swift was a friend of Halifax also, but never apparently met the two together nor did he mention them together. In 1717

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Sir Alan Cook

Catherine married John Conduitt, who would succeed Newton at the Mint. Catherine was renowned in all London for her beauty and wit. She was a toast of

the Kit-Kat Club, the club of aristocratic supporters of the Revolution Settlement of 1689, Halifax among them. He and others wrote verses to her (and many other ladies) to be engraved on toasting glasses. The following was published as Dryden's, although there are doubts that it was by him:

At Barton's feet the god of love His arrows and his Quiver lays Forgets he has a Throne above And with this lovely Creature stays

Not Venus' Beauties are more bright But each appear so like the other That Cupid has mistook the Right And takes the Nymph to be his Mother.13

When Catherine and Swift dined together they exchanged salacious gossip, which he reported to Stella. Through him and through Newton she very probably knew John Arbuthnot, F.R.S., Queen Anne's physician, the inventor of John Bull, and a musical colleague of Handel. She knew Halley and recorded some stories about him and Newton.

In April 1715, not long before Halifax died, Catherine was Newton's hostess when he entertained the distinguished visitors who came to see the total solar eclipse in London. Remond de Montmort was struck at least as forcibly by Catherine's elegance and wit as by the eclipse. He wrote to Brook Taylor:

Ever since I beheld her, I have adored her not only for her great beauty but for her lively and refined wit. I believe there is no danger in betraying me to her. If I had the good fortune to be near her, I would henceforth be as awkward as when we first met.14

Voltaire also met her and heard from her the story that the notion of gravitation came to Newton when he saw an apple fall in his garden.

Catherine, like Lady Ranelagh and Lady Masham, advanced the scientific revolution by her support of a great man, the principal revolutionary in fact. No doubt she also added to the liveliness of other natural philosophers around Newton. Her unique contribution to the scientific revolution lies elsewhere. She had many recollections of her uncle, such as that recorded by Voltaire. Stukeley, who often visited Newton in his later years, also had some reminiscences from her. Catherine always seems to have recognized that Uncle Isaac was someone special, and after his death, she and her husband ensured that his papers and recollections of him were preserved. Their daughter, Kitty Conduitt, married the future Earl of Portmouth, and so the papers came into the Portsmouth family and thence in large part formed the Newton Collection in the University Library at Cambridge. To Catherine and her husband we owe the very full knowledge we now have of how Newton developed his mathematical philosophy, of his pursuits of alchemy and theology, as well as the glimpses of his relations with Halley and others in his later years.

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QUEEN CAROLINE (1683-1737)

Caroline of Anspach, Princess of Wales and wife of George II, was a forceful politician who maintained her husband's interest in perpetual disputes with his parents, and who strongly supported Walpole throughout his ministry.15 She was educated mainly by her grandmother and was keenly interested in philosophy. She was known as the Minerva of the Age. She kept up a philosophical correspondence with Leibniz after she came to England on the death of Queen Anne, but he did not get all the support he looked for in his disputes with Newton.

She knew Newton quite well and asked him, towards the end of his life, for an explanation of his biblical chronology. Newton wrote it for her alone but somehow it came into the hands of a French priest, Fr Souciet, who disagreed with a key point in it. Newton based his timescale on the date at which the centaur Cheiron is supposed to have fixed the position of the First Point of the constellation, Aries. Souciet thought Newton got it wrong. After Newton was dead Halley wrote two papers in his capacity as Astronomer Royal as well as a friend of Newton's, in which he advanced astronomical arguments, turning on the identification of certain stars, to show that Newton had been right, and consequently that his dates for the Siege of Troy and the Voyage of the Argonauts were also correct. It is curious indeed that so long after the publication of the Principia, Newton and Halley could argue about the mythical Cheiron as if he were historical.'6

When Halley had been some time at the Royal Observatory, he asked that Queen Caroline should visit Greenwich. She came, and when she learnt that his salary as Astronomer Royal was £100, suggested she should get it raised. Halley is supposed to have declined, on the grounds that his successors might seek the post for the money instead of to advance knowledge. Caroline did however arrange that he should have the half pay of a Post Captain to which he was entitled, as he had held a commission as a Captain in the Royal Navy.

EMILIE DU CHATELET (1706-1749)

The first and only translation of Newton's Principia into French was made by the Marquise du Chatelet.17 Gabrielle-Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet, Emilie to her contemporaries, was a daughter of the family of Breteuil that produced a number of distinguished administrators and diplomats from the seventeenth century up to the end of the nineteenth. By a curious circumstance the Marquis de Breteuil still inhabits the family chateau to the south-west of Paris. When the Revolution broke out the heir was a minor and a ward of the Crown. The various revolutionary and Napoleonic authorities continued to exercise their guardianship until, when he was of age and things had quietened down, the Marquis was able to take possession of his inheritance. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, set up to maintain the metric system, occupies the Pavillon de Breteuil on the edge of the

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Sir Alan Cook

Parc de St Cloud at Sevres. The metric system arose out of the geodetic measurements that were made to decide whether Newton was correct in thinking that the Earth was flattened at the poles, or Cassini in thinking that it was pointed.

Emilie married the Marquis du Chatelet, a general who was often away on duty. She was vivacious, with many intellectual friends and possibly lovers, among them Alexis-Claude Clairaut. Maupertuis, who had taken part in the geodetic measurements in Lapland and Peru, taught her mathematics. When Voltaire was threatened with arrest for subversive writings he withdrew to Emilie's chateau at Cirey in Champagne, where the two held court in a brilliant centre of literary and philosophical life.

Emilie had first encountered Newton through the Opticks, and had published a number of works on physics and philosophy before she embarked on the translation of the Principia.'8 She was well equipped to do it for she was thoroughly schooled in latin as well as mathematics. She intended to cooperate with Clairaut, who would contribute some mathematical commentaries, but he held back when he had his doubts about the inverse square law. If she did need help with the mathematics, it is most likely he who would have given it, as a close friend and deeply knowledgeable about the Principia. Emilie completed the manuscript shortly before she died from puerperal fever and her book was published posthumously 10 years later.

The Marquise certainly had a large part in the scientific revolution as the friend or mistress of both Voltaire and Clairaut, and by making Newton's work accessible in French.

NICOLE-REINE ETABLE DE LA BIERE LEPAUTE (1723-1788)

The French astronomer de L'Isle, who had visited Halley in England and admired his achievements, impressed upon his colleagues in Paris how important it was to look for the return of the comet of 1682 as Halley had predicted. Halley and Newton both knew that the time of the return would be significantly affected by the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn, but Newton could not make adequate calculations. Clairaut had applied methods for the solution of differential equations that had been developed in France to the equations that represented some of the important problems of the Principia. Could he not apply his solutions of the three-body problem to the effects of Jupiter and Saturn upon the comet? He could, but the mathematics was very heavy, in part because of the considerable inclination of the orbit of the comet to the ecliptic. The numerical calculations were very long; d'Alembert apparently gave up when he realized what was involved.

Clairaut and de L'Isle persuaded de Lalande to undertake the calculations and he called on Mme Lepaute for assistance. The wife of a very skilful watchmaker and clockmaker to the king, she was another friend of Clairaut. She had already made astronomical calculations. She later published a series of 'Observations' in the Connaissance des Temps from 1759 to 1774, as well as a number of tables in ephemerides. She published a map of the predicted path of the shadow of the annular solar eclipse of 1 April 1764, similar to the one that Halley had published for the

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Ladies in the scientific revolution 11

eclipse of 1715 over the south of England.'9 In extensive calculations such as the cometary calculations, it is important to

organize the work in a systematic manner, and it appears that that was Mme Lepautes's especial contribution, though not the only one. In his account of the recovery of the comet, de Lalande wrote that the immense ensemble of detail would have seemed

frightening to him if Madame Lepaute, who had for a long time applied herself

successfully to astronomical calculations, had not taken part in the work:

Mme Lepaute nous fut d'un si grand secours, que nous n'aurions point ose sans elle entreprendre cet enorme travail, ou il fallait calculer pour tous les degres et pour cent cinquante ans les distances et les forces de chacune des deux planetes par rapport a la comete. Je lui ai rendu justice a cet egard dans ma Theorie des Cometes.

Six weeks after Clairaut announced his prediction to the Academie Royale des Sciences, Messier, de L'Isle's assistant at the Naval Observatory in the Hotel de

Cluny in Paris, found the comet on 21 January 1759; it later turned out that there had been earlier observations in Germany. The return of the comet virtually on time

(perigee was in fact about a month earlier than predicted) was hailed as a powerful affirmation of Newtonian dynamics and of the regularity and predictability of the natural world. De Lalande could say, with some justified self-satisfaction:

The universe beholds this year the most satisfactory phenomenon ever presented to us by astronomy; an event which unique until this day changes our doubts to certainty and our hypotheses to demonstration.

It did that, and while it did not effect the scientific revolution on its own, it seemed to confirm and validate all that had gone before. Thereafter it became the conventional wisdom that the natural world was indeed governed by definite physical laws and evolved in strict conformity with them. The Enlightenment had dawned.

CONCLUSION

The Enlightenment was indebted to the biological as well as to the physical sciences. Women seem not to have been so prominent in biology, but one at least, Elizabeth Blackwell, published a substantial herbal at the end of the revolution.20

Two women are clear precursors of later women scientists. Elizabeth Hevelius was followed as an observer by Caroline Herschel, Mme Lepaute as a calculator by Byron's daughter, Ada Countess of Lovelace, the colleague of Babbage. Others

supported their friends or relatives; Christina of Sweden and Caroline of Anspach were learned and active patrons. Catherine Barton puts us in her debt for important things we know about the scientific revolution. No doubt the scientific revolution would have

happened had those ladies never lived, but they surely influenced the course it took. Each of them also, in different ways, seems to have made life for their friends and

colleagues more agreeable, more interesting, more elegant and more refined.



Sir Alan Cook

NOTES

1 R.E.W. Maddison, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle FRS (London, 1969). 2 Quoted in R.S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science, p.115 (Wiley and Sons,

1971; republished Cambridge University Press, 1977). 3 S. Akerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle (Leiden, New York, etc., Brill, 1991). 4 S. Rotta, L' accademia fisico-matematica Ciampiniana: un'iniziativa di Cristina?, in W. di Palma

& T Bovi, Cristina di Svezia, Scienza edAlchimia nella Roma barocca (Roma, Dedalo, 1990). 5 G.-D. Cassini, Specimen observationum Bolognesium (1656). 6 'Hevelius', in Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 7 L.C. Beziat 'La vie et les travaux de Jean Hevelius', Bulletino Bibliografia e Storia Scienzie

Mathmetica e Physica 8, 497-558, 589-669 (1875). 8 T. Heare, Remains and collections (Oxford Hist.Soc.) 4, 1713 (1884). 9 'Masham, Damaris', in Dictionary of National Biography; M. Cranston, John Locke (Oxford,

1985, reprint of original of 1957). 10 D. Masham, A Discourse of the Love of God (1696); Occasional Thoughts in Reference to

a Godly and Virtuous Life (1705). 11 Philoclea (Lady Masham) to Locke, 9 March 1682, Bodleian Library, Locke MSS, c. 17, f. 83 12 University Library, Amsterdam, Remonstrants' MSS, J. 57a. 13 John Dryden, Miscellany Poems, 5th edn, vol. 5, p. 61 (probably not by Dryden) (London, 1727). 14 Brook Taylor, Contemplatio Philosophica (London, 1793). Newton gave Remond de

Monmort presents for himself and his wife, for which Montmort thanked him, writing of the 'ornaments given by Mr Newton and chosen by Mrs Barton whose wit and taste are equal to her beauty', letter of 25 Feb 1717, King's MS 101.

15 'Queen Caroline', in Dictionary of National Biography. 16 Edmund Halley, Remarks upon some dissertations lately publish'd at Paris, by the Rev. P.

Souciet, against Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology by Dr Edmund Halley, Astronomer Royal, F.R.S.; Philosophical Transactions. 34, 205-210 (1727). Some further Remarks on P. Souciet's dissertations against Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, by Edmund Halley, L.L.D., Astron. Reg., in a Letter to Dr Jurin Coll. Med. and S.R. Soc. Philosophical Transactions. 35,296-300(1727).

17 'du Chatelet, Emilie', in Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Les Lettres de la Marquise du Chatelet, 2 vols (T. Beslermin, Geneva, 1958).

18 du Chatelet, Emilie, Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation dufeu (1739); Institutions de physique (1740).

19 'Lepaute, Nicole-Reine', in Nouvelle Biographie Universelle 30, (1859). Edmund Halley, The Black Day or a Prospect of Doomsday exemplified in the great and terrible Eclipse which will happen on the 22nd of April 1715 ... and explaining the schemes thereof according to ... calculations by Mr Halley, ... Mr Whiston etc (London, 1714).

20 Elizabeth Blackwell, A Curious Herbal, 2 vols (London, 1737).

Portraits of some of the ladies of this note. Maddison (note 1) reproduces an unattributed portrait of Lady Ranelagh. Elizabeth Hevelius appears in an engraving of the Large Sextant in the Machina Coelestis (1673). There are many portraits of Queen Christina. One is in the Corsini Gallery in Rome, another by Thomas Murray (who also painted Halley twice) is in a private collection in England. Portraits of Catherine Barton and her husband are shown hanging on a wall in a picture by Hogarth, 'A scene from the "Indian Emperour or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards"' (reproduced by Milo Keynes, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 49, 44 (1995). Among other portraits of Queen Caroline, there is one full length in the Fishmongers Hall, London Bridge.

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Ladies in the Scientific Revolution