---
title: "Women in science"
chunk: 6/25
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:55.623183+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Science remained a largely amateur profession during the early part of the nineteenth century. Botany was considered a popular and fashionable activity, and one particularly suitable to women. In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was one of the most accessible areas of science for women in both England and North America.
However, as the nineteenth century progressed, botany and other sciences became increasingly professionalized, and women were increasingly excluded.  Women's contributions were limited by their exclusion from most formal scientific education, but began to be recognized through their occasional admittance into learned societies during this period.
Scottish scientist Mary Fairfax Somerville carried out experiments in magnetism, presenting a paper entitled 'The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum' to the Royal Society in 1826, the second woman to do so. She also wrote several mathematical, astronomical, physical and geographical texts, and was a strong advocate for women's education. In 1835, she and Caroline Herschel were the first two women elected as Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society.
English mathematician Ada, Lady Lovelace, a pupil of Somerville, corresponded with Charles Babbage about applications for his analytical engine. In her notes (1842–43) appended to her translation of Luigi Menabrea's article on the engine, she foresaw wide applications for it as a general-purpose computer, including composing music. She has been credited as writing the first computer program, though this has been disputed.
In Germany, institutes for "higher" education of women (Höhere Mädchenschule, in some regions called Lyzeum) were founded at the beginning of the century. The Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth was established in 1836 to instruct women in nursing. Elizabeth Fry visited the institute in 1840 and was inspired to found the London Institute of Nursing, and Florence Nightingale studied there in 1851.
In the US, Maria Mitchell made her name by discovering a comet in 1847, but also contributed calculations to the Nautical Almanac produced by the United States Naval Observatory. She became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850.
Other notable female scientists during this period include:

in Britain, Mary Anning (paleontologist), Anna Atkins (botanist), Janet Taylor (astronomer), , Penelope Steel (cartographer)
in France, Marie-Sophie Germain (mathematician), Jeanne Villepreux-Power (marine biologist)

==== Late 19th century in western Europe ====
The latter part of the 19th century saw a rise in educational opportunities for women. Schools aiming to provide education for girls similar to that afforded to boys were founded in the UK, including the North London Collegiate School (1850), Cheltenham Ladies' College (1853) and the Girls' Public Day School Trust schools (from 1872). The first UK women's university college, Girton, was founded in 1869, and others soon followed: Newnham (1871) and Somerville (1879).
The Crimean War (1854–1856) contributed to establishing nursing as a profession, making Florence Nightingale a household name. A public subscription allowed Nightingale to establish a school of nursing in London in 1860, and schools following her principles were established throughout the UK. Nightingale was also a pioneer in public health as well as a statistician.
James Barry became the first British woman to gain a medical qualification in 1812, passing as a man. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first openly female Briton to qualify medically, in 1865. With Sophia Jex-Blake, American Elizabeth Blackwell and others, Garret Anderson founded the first UK medical school to train women, the London School of Medicine for Women, in 1874.

Annie Scott Dill Maunder was a pioneer in astronomical photography, especially of sunspots. A mathematics graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, she was first hired (in 1890) to be an assistant to Edward Walter Maunder, discoverer of the Maunder Minimum, the head of the solar department at Greenwich Observatory. They worked together to observe sunspots and to refine the techniques of solar photography. They married in 1895. Annie's mathematical skills made it possible to analyse the years of sunspot data that Maunder had been collecting at Greenwich. She also designed a small, portable wide-angle camera with a 1.5-inch-diameter (38 mm) lens. In 1898, the Maunders traveled to India, where Annie took the first photographs of the Sun's corona during a solar eclipse. By analysing the Cambridge records for both sunspots and geomagnetic storm, they were able to show that specific regions of the Sun's surface were the source of geomagnetic storms and that the Sun did not radiate its energy uniformly into space, as William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin had declared.
In Prussia women could go to university from 1894 and were allowed to receive a PhD. In 1908 all remaining restrictions for women were terminated.
Alphonse Rebière published a book in 1897, in France, entitled Les Femmes dans la science (Women in Science) which listed the contributions and publications of women in science.
Other notable female scientists during this period include:

in Britain, Hertha Marks Ayrton (mathematician, engineer), Margaret Huggins (astronomer), Beatrix Potter (mycologist)
in France, Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts (American-born astronomer)
in Germany, Amalie Dietrich (naturalist), Agnes Pockels (physicist)
in Russia and Sweden, Sofia Kovalevskaya (mathematician)

==== Late nineteenth-century Russians ====
In the second half of the 19th century, a large proportion of the most successful women in the STEM fields were Russians.  Although many women received advanced training in medicine in the 1870s, in other fields women were barred and had to go to western Europe – mainly Switzerland – in order to pursue scientific studies.  In her book about these "women of the [eighteen] sixties" (шестидесятницы), as they were called, Ann Hibner Koblitz writes:

To a large extent, women's higher education in continental Europe was pioneered by this first generation of Russian women.  They were the first students in Zürich, Heidelberg, Leipzig, and elsewhere.  Theirs were the first doctorates in medicine, chemistry, mathematics, and biology.