Caroline Herschel, Mary Cornwallis Herschel: Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel, Mary Cornwallis Herschel: Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel
London, 1876

Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) was a German-born astronomer and the first woman to be paid for working as an astronomer. She moved to England at the age of 22 following her brother, who was interested in astronomy. Caroline worked as her brother’s assistant. Her brother William Herschel (1738-1822) was the first to discover a planet through a telescope: Uranus.

Eventually the siblings became astronomers for the British royal family and moved to Windsor. Caroline’s assisting duties included grinding and polishing telescope mirrors and making calculations based on her brother’s observations. Soon, however, she began to make her own observations with a telescope. She discovered three gas clouds and, in 1786, the comet “Comet C/1786 P1 (Herschel)”. She became the first woman to discover a comet. During her career she discovered eight comets. In 1787, King George III began paying a salary to Caroline, who worked as his brother’s assistant. She thus became the first woman to be paid to be an astronomer and the first woman in Britain to be paid to work as a scientist.

The memoir published in 1876 contains her correspondence.