Hypatia's Heritage ; A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century

254 Pages·1986·33.124 MB·English

by  Margaret Alic

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ARCHBISHOP MITTY LIBRARY
T 10805 509 . 2 ALI
Hypatia's heritage a history
Archbishop Mitty High School
Library
5000 Mitty Way
San Jose, CA 95129
MAY O7 1998
Hypatia's Heritage
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012
http://archive.org/details/isbn_9780807067314
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509.2
"h'lnter
ALI
MARGARET ALIC
Hypatia's Heritage
A History of Women in Science from Antiquity
through the Nineteenth Century
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j Beacon Press Boston
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Beacon Press
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25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices
of the Unitarian Universalist Association
of Congregations in North America.
© 1986 by Margaret Alic
First published by The Women's Press Limited in 1986
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
99 98 97 96 10 9 8 7 6 5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alic, Margaret.
Hypatia's heritage.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
l. Women in science-History. I. Title.
Ql30.A48 1986b 509.2'2 86-47510
ISBN 0-8070-6730-X
ISBN 0-8070-6731-8 {pbk.)
The exuact from What Happened in History
on p.12 appears copyright© Estate of V. Gordon Child, 1942.
Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
The extracts from Sophie Germain: An Essay on the History
of the Theory of Elasticity on pp. 149-54 appears
copyright ©1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
Contents
Introduction l
Prologue 4
1. Goddesses and Gatherers: Women In Prehistory 12
The First Women Scientists - Goddesses and
Heroines
2. Women and Science in the Ancient World 20
The First Written Records - The Women
Pythagoreans - Women Philosophers of the Golden
Age of Greece - The Medi!cal Women of Classical
Greece - The Roman Matrons
3. From the Alexandrians to the Arabs 35
The Alexandrian Alchemists - Hypatia of
Alexandria - The Survival of Science
so
4. Medicine and Alchemy: Women and Experimental
Science in the Middle Ages
Trotula and the 'Ladies of Salemo' - Women and
Medicine in the Later Middle Ages - Women
Scientists of the Italian Renaissance - Mediaeval
Alchemy
5. 'The Sibyl of the Rhine' 62
6. The Rise of the Scientific Lady 77
Women and the 'Selling' of Science - 'Mad Madge',
The Duchess of Newcastle - Lady Mary Montagu,
Scientist and Feminist - The Scientific Lady
Satirised
7. From Alchemy and Herbs: Chemists and 95
Physicians of the Scientific Revolution
The New Chemists - Alchemical and Herbal
V
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Contents
Vl
Medicine - Medicine Becomes a Science - Women
Invade the Profession
8. The New Naturalists 108
Natural History during th,e Scientific Revolution -
Botany, the Female Science -The Women
Geologists - Women Naturalists Become Biologists
9. The Women Astronomers 119
The Copernican Revolution - Caroline Herschel
and her Comet Sweepers
10. The Philosophers of the Scientific Revolution 135
The Women Philosophers of Italy - The Marquise
du Chatelet
11. The Nineteenth-Century Mathematicians 148
The Mathematical Contributions of Sophie
Germain - Ada Lovelace and the Beginnings of
Computer Science - The Mathematical Mind: The
Story of S6phia Kovalevsky
12. The Popularisation and Professionalisation of Science 174
Jane Marcet's Conversations - The Universities and
the Scientific Societies - Mary Somerville: 'The
Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science'
Epilogue 191
Notes 192
Bibliography 210
Index 225
Acknowledgments
Over the years many people have contributed their talents to the
researching and writing of this book.
Debbie Lev has been a part of the project from its inception.
Together we began to research the history of women in science. And
together we taught the women's studies class that was the seed for
this book. My discussions with her have been of the greatest value.
Debbie has also read and criticised portions of the manuscript and
she contributed the illustrations of Maria's apparatus and the
astrolabe.
John Alic, Nick Allen, Howard Cutler, Esther Lev, Deb Simes, Lillie
Wilson and Anndy Wiselogle read various chapters and offered
many helpful suggestions and ideas. Lem bi Kongas provided guidance
when I found myself lost in a maze of anthropological theories. Jim
and Anita Alic, Bella Brodzki, Shirley Lev, Jonathan Potkin, Marjorie
Speirs, Noam Stampfer and Jeff Zucker al I contributed in other ways
to the completion of this book.1 am grateful to each of them for their
ongoing encouragement.
In addition to reading the manuscript and suggesting a number of
improvements, Dale Spender has devoted herself to seeing the work
through to publication.
I am grateful to Ros de Lanerolle and Jen Green, the editors at The
Women's Press, and to the Women's Studies Program of Portland
State University for believing in this project. And it could never have
been completed without the valuable assistance of the interlibrary
loan librarians at the Multnomah County Library, Portland State
University and the Oregon Graduate Center.
Michael R. Smith spent countless days and weeks editing drafts of
all but the last few chapters of the manuscript. Whatever merits this
.,
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vi ii Acknowledgments
book may possess are, in large part, due to Michael. He was the
perfect editor.
I am grateful to all of these people for their contributions and
encouragement. However, I alone am responsible for whatever errors
appear here. Some errors are, unfortunately, inevitable in ,; field of
history as new as this one. Research on the history of women in
science has barely begun.
Margaret Alic, Portland, Oregon, July 1985
Illustrations
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint:
Hypatia. From E1bert Hubbard, Little /ourneys to the Homes of Great
Teachers (New York: William Wise&. Co., 19281.
The Pythagorean Universe. From Gerald Tauber, Man's View Of The
Universe (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 19791.
The Tribikos. From a drawing by Debbie Lev, after F. Sherwood
Taylor's reconstruction, 'The Evolution of the Still', Annals of
Science 5 (1 945 ).
The Kerotakis. From a drawing by Debbje Lev, Ibid.
The Gold-Making of Cleopatra. From C.A. Burland, The Arts of The
Alchemists (London: Weidenfeld, 1967).
The components of a plane astrolabe. From a drawing by Debbie Lev.
Hildegard's first scheme of the universe. From Charles Singer, From
Magic to Science: Essays on the Scientific Twilight (New York: Dover
Books, 1958).
Hildegard's later scheme of the universe. Ibid.
Elisabeth and Johannes Hevelius. From P.V. Rizzo, 'Early Daughters
of Urania', Sky o-J Telescope 14.
Title page to Emilie du Chatelet's translation of Newton's Principia.
Courtesy of I. Bernard Cohen.