Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science

How science closed its doors to women in the nineteenth century, told through the story of an American astronomer who achieved international fameScience has not always been a masculine domain. In this engaging biography of a little-known American, Renee Bergland shows us a time not long ago, when girls and women flourished—and outnumbered men—in science and math.Born and raised on Nantucket, Maria Mitchell apprenticed with her father, an amateur astronomer. In 1847, thanks to her diligent “sweeps” of the sky, Mitchell discovered the comet that would catapult her to international fame. Soon she was hired as the “computer of Venus,” a sort of human calculator, for the U.S. Nautical Almanac. Mitchell later joined the founding faculty at Vassar, where she sadly watched opportunities for her students vanish as science morphed from a private pursuit to a public profession, and the increasingly male scientific establishment closed ranks. In tracing Mitchell’s story, Bergland chronicles the ideological and professional changes that led to the sexing of science—now so familiar that we take it for granted.