A letter linking two of the most important female scientists of the 19th century
Autograph letter signed.
Small 8vo. 1 page on bifolium. With autogr. envelope.
€ 6,500.00
To Ada, Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, declining an invitation: "I have an engagement on the 22d otherwise I should have had much pleasure in dining with you that day".
The daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, Mary Somerville was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother, Margaret Charters. She was born at Jedburgh, south of Edinburgh, and her childhood home was with her maternal family in Burntisland, Fife. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and by the mid-1820s had established herself as a significant figure in London scientific circles. In 1831 she published "The Mechanism of the Heavens", a condensation of Laplace's "Mécanique céleste", and the first in what was to be an immensely successful and influential series of scientific text-books which were to make her arguably the most widely recognised woman of science before Marie Curie. Somerville was not only a friend but an early intellectual influence on Ada Lovelace, and it was most likely she who introduced the then Ada Byron to Charles Babbage in 1833, when she was seventeen. in 1835 she was elected one of the first female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society, together with Caroline Herschel.
Traces of folds; tiny pinholes to left margin (not touching text), otherwise in fine condition.
