Women in Science Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV WOMEN IN ASTKONOMT Urania, the muse of astronomy, was a woman; and, although most of her devotees have been men, the number of the gentler sex who have achieved success in the cultivation of the science of the stars has been much larger than is usually supposed. There is reason to believe that woman's interest in astronomy dates back to early Egyptian and Babylonian times when the star-gazers in the fertile valley of the Nile and on the broad plains of Chaldea were so active, and when they made so many important discoveries respecting the laws and movements of the heavenly bodies. According to Plutarch, Aganice, the daughter of Sesostris, King of Egypt, tried to predict future events by the aid of celestial globes and by the study of the constellations. Her observations, however, were in the interests of astrology rather than of astronomy, as we now understand the science. The first woman whose name has come down to us, who deserved to be regarded as an astronomer, was most probably Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetoris of Thessaly. By means of the lunar cycle known as the Saros, a period discovered by the Chaldean astronomers and embracing a little more than eighteen years, during which the eclipses of the moon and sun recur in nearly the same order as during the preceding period, this Greek woman was able to predict eclipses. The people among whom she lived regarded her as a sorceress; but she flouted them all, and declared that she was able to make the sun and moon disappear at will. The first woman, however, to attain eminence as an astronomer was undoubtedly /HypajJa, that universal genius of the ancient world, who seemed equally at home in literature, philosophy and mathematics, and who may justly be regarded as one of the most highly gifted women th...Read More