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Top 10 Amazing Facts about Caroline Herschel
To best describe Caroline Herschel is to call her a woman who made the best of her situation. She was able to make lemonade out of lemons.
Caroline Herschel began her lonely and miserable life in astronomy as her brother’s assistant. Despite the rough start, she was able to become a legend in astronomy thanks to her remarkable findings and works. Her most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of eight comets and 14 nebulae.
To learn more about the woman who found her passion staring in the night sky and uncovering its hidden treasures, here are the top 10 amazing facts about Caroline Herschel;
1. Destined to be a domestic servant
Portrait of a domestic worker cooking, 1855 – Wikipedia
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany, to Issak Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen. Anna was illiterate and opposed the idea of her daughter receiving any education, as she believed girls should only work in the house.
Fortunately, Herschel’s father did not share the same notion and would allow Herschel to join her brothers’ lesson when her mother was not around. As a result, Herschel received a cursory education, learning to read and write and little more.
Things turned for the worse when Herschel suffered from typhus, which stunted her growth, such that she never grew taller than 4 feet 3 inches (1.30 m). She also experienced vision loss in her left eye as a result of her illness. This made the family assume that Herschel would never get married, and her mother felt the best thing for her would be to train to be a house servant.
2. Deprived of having a better life
Even though it still happens up to date, it is sad to think that a woman’s worth is directly influenced with her physical appearance. Herschel’s physical appearance was greatly altered when typhus struck her, and she was declared unworthy of earning her independence.
Because of this, her family assumed that no man would want to marry her, thus rather than receiving a proper education she was trained as a house servant. This is how Herschel ended up being the family’s domestic servant.
In an effort to improve her conditions Herschel took up needlework which she learnt from her neighbour. Sadly, this was all in vain because her mother did not want her to become a governess and earning her independence that way, thus she forbade Herschel from learning French and advancing her needlework training.
This resulted in Herschel spending long hours performing household chores instead of advancing herself by pursuing the things that she wanted.
3. Brothers’ unconditional love
1785 portrait by Lemuel Francis Abbott of William Herschel – Wikipedia
Herschel had two brothers, William and Alexander, migrated to Great Britain in 1757. Following the death of their father, the two brothers proposed that Herschel join them in Bath, England. Herschel arrived in England on 24 August 1772 to live with William in New King Street, Bath. The house they shared is now the location of the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.
To persuade their mother to allow Herschel to make this journey, William agreed to pay his mother for a servant to perform the domestic duties that Herschel normally did. On her way to England, she was first introduced to astronomy by way of the constellations and opticians’ shops.
While in Bath, Herschel was responsible for running William’s household. However, the situation was different from that of her mother because her brother gave her the freedom to indulge in her desire to learn. Willian even went the extra mile of teaching her English and mathematics.
4. Herschel was a singer
When William came for Herschel, he wanted her to singer in his church performances. Herschel not only ended up becoming an integral part in William’s musical performances at small gatherings, but she also learned how to dance and play the harpsichord.
Her reputation grew as a notable soprano after a remarkable performance as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah in April 1778. After this performance, she was offered an opportunity to perform at the Birmingham festival.
Herschel musical abilities should not come as a surprise since her father, Issak Herschel, was a self-taught oboist. Her brother William was an organist, a music teacher and choirmaster of the Octagon Chapel.
Unfortunately, Herschel gave up her singing career when her brother opted to focus more on astronomy. As she puts it in her Memoir, “I did nothing for my brother but what a well-trained puppy dog would have done, that is to say, I did what he commanded me.”
5. Finding her passion in an unlikely place
Night sky – Unsplash
Herschel was not happy about giving up on her singing career and following her brother William in his journey of discovering the sky. In August 1782, age 32, Herschel left her beloved Bath and went to live in Datchet, near Windsor Castle.
Her first few months were miserable and lonely. She laments in her Memoir, “I was to be trained for an assistant astronomer; and by way of encouragement a telescope adapted for sweeping [the night skies] was given to me”
She continues, “I was to sweep for comets… But it was not till the last two months of the same year before I felt the least encouragement for spending the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered by dew or hoar frost without a human being near enough to be within call.”
However, over time, she started appreciating the night sky and was able to uncover some of its hidden gems.
6. The first female to discover a comet
Comet – Wikipedia
This is a very controversial statement because Maria Kirch is the first woman to discover a comet back in the early 1700s. Sadly, her discovery was attributed to her husband, Gottfried Kirch. To be more accurate, Herschel is the first woman to be official credited as discovering a comet.
Herschel discovered an object traveling slowly through the night sky on 1 August 1786 while her brother was away, and she was using his telescope. She observed the same object the following night and immediately informed other astronomers about her discovery via mail. What she had observed was a comet.
Another reason that cemented Herschel as the first woman to discover a comment is the fact that when her brother William when he was summoned to Windsor Castle to demonstrate the comet to the royal family, he refereed to it as “My Sister’s Comet.”
Over the course of her life, Herschel’s discovered a total of eight comets.
7. Herschel’s work is often overshadowed by her brother’s works
Caroline Herschel giving tea to her brother William polishing a telescope mirror, 1896 Lithograph – Wikipedia
Herschel’s brother is no other than Frederick William Herschel. William discovered the planet Uranus, hypothesized that nebulae are composed of stars, and developed a theory of stellar evolution. Despite being very crucial in her brother’s discoveries, she worked as his assistant, she received limited recognition.
Since moving to Datchet, Herschel worked as her brother’s assistant and performed various duties such as copying scientific papers, interpreting tables, and performing complex mathematical calculations involving trigonometry, logarithms, and conversions.
Herschel was contented spending sleepless nights assisting her brother, even remarking in her memoir, “ I had the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours to assist him.”
It was not until 1782 that Herschel was allowed to use a small telescope to document her own findings.
8. The first female scientist to be paid wages
In 1787, at age 37, Herschel became the first woman to receive a salary for services to science. She received a pension from King George III of £50 a year. This made her the first professional woman astronomer.
In recognition of her discovering a comet, King Georhe II officially appointed Herschel as her brother’s assistant, and this resulted in her earning her first salary. This was an exciting moment for her because throughout her writings Herschel has repeatedly expressed her desire to be able to support herself and be independent.
In her memoir, she writes, “the first money I ever in all my lifetime thought myself to be at liberty to spend to my own liking.”
9. The first female to receive the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical society
1847 lithograph of Caroline Herschel, around 97 years of age – Wikipedia
The Royal Astronomical Society ,RAS, is a learned society and charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. It recognizes achievement in astronomy and geophysics by issuing annual awards and prizes, with its highest award being the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In 1828 Herschel was awarded the gold medal from the Astronomical Society “for her recent reduction, to January, 1800, of the [2,500] Nebulæ discovered by her illustrious brother, which may be considered as the completion of a series of exertions probably unparalleled either in magnitude or importance in the annals of astronomical labour.”
In 1835, she was elected as an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society alongside Mary Somerville, a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath.
Sadly she felt like she did not derive such recognition writing in her journal, “I cannot help crying out loud to myself, every now and then, What is that for? I think it is almost mocking me to look upon me as a Member of the Academy; I that have lived these eighteen years without finding so much as a single comet.”
10. Passing down her knowledge
Sir John Frederick William Herschel – Wikipedia
At age 75 in order to help her nephew, John Herschel, Herschel arranged two-and-a-half thousand nebulae and star clusters into zones of similar polar distances. This new catalogue greatly assisted John in the foundation of his “General Catalogue” published in 1864.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet ended up being an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
In appreciation to her aunt, John writes, “I learned fully to appreciate the skill, diligence and accuracy which that indefatigable lady brought to bear on a task which only the most boundless devotion could have induced her to undertake, and enabled her to accomplish.”
