{"id":7329,"date":"2026-09-03T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/?p=7329"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:00:15","slug":"mary-somerville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/women-who-built-the-future\/mary-somerville\/","title":{"rendered":"MARY SOMERVILLE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>SHE WAS STILL PUBLISHING SCIENCE AT 89<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MARY SOMERVILLE DIDN'T GET THE MEMO ABOUT SLOWING DOWN.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Born in Scotland in 1780, Mary Somerville grew up at a time when serious education for girls was considered largely unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That didn't stop her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She taught herself mathematics, became fascinated by astronomy and science, and eventually became one of the most respected scientific writers of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And she certainly didn't disappear quietly as she got older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At <strong>68<\/strong>, Somerville published <em>Physical Geography<\/em>. It became her most successful book and remained in use in schools and universities for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, in 1869, at the age of <strong>89<\/strong>, she published another major scientific work: <em>Molecular and Microscopic Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think about that for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At an age when society might have expected a Victorian woman to have withdrawn completely from public intellectual life, Mary Somerville was still writing about atoms, molecules, plant life, animal life and the microscopic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1835, she and astronomer Caroline Herschel had already made history as the <strong>first two women granted honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She lived until 91.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And perhaps Mary Somerville's story leaves us with a question worth asking today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Why are we so obsessed with asking women when they intend to slow down, rather than asking what they intend to do next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This September, <strong>Steampunk Australia celebrates Women Who Built the Future<\/strong> \u2014 scientists, inventors, engineers, pioneers and women who refused to accept the limits placed upon them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It leads to the launch of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>WRINKLES IN THE FABRIC<br>with Dr Kathryn Spurling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Conversations with remarkable women over 55.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A woman's story doesn't end at 55. Sometimes that's where it gets interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mary Somerville's <em>Physical Geography<\/em> was published when she was 68 and her final scientific book when she was 89; the Royal Society also records her and Caroline Herschel's 1835 RAS honour<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She was publishing science at 89<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-who-built-the-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7331,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions\/7331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}