Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell never married. Throughout her life she remained close to her parents and siblings, and took care of her father after her mother’s death in 1861.

She died on June 28, 1889, at the age of 70, in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell. Her parents were Quakers and she was one of their ten children.

Growing up in a typical Quaker community which emphasized on girls’ education and women’s equality, Maria and her sisters received a high-quality education at par with their brothers.

She received her primary education from Elizabeth Gardener's small school and later moved to the North Grammar school, where her father was the first principal. Her father later built his own school where she was not only a student, but also a teaching assistant to her father.

Her father realized Maria’s interest in astronomy and started teaching her astronomy using his personal telescope at home. She had a natural flair for learning about the heavenly bodies and helped her father in calculating the exact moment of an annular eclipse even before she turned 13.

Her father’s school closed down and thus she moved on to attend Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies.

After completing her education from Peirce’s school she started working as his teaching assistant. Eventually she opened her own school in 1835.

An independent minded woman who believed in equal rights for all, she decided to allow all children irrespective of their color or race to attend her school. It was considered a controversial move because in those times segregated schools were the norm.

She was later on offered the position of the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum which she accepted. She held this job for the next 20 years. She continued studying and observing the heavenly bodies on her own in her leisure time in addition to her job.

She observed a small blurry streak in the sky through her telescope on the evening of October 1, 1847. She realized that it was a comet and excitedly informed her father. She then recorded the object’s position, and continued to observe it to be sure it was a comet.

When she became sure that it was indeed a comet, her father announced her discovery. This discovery won her a prestigious award and she soon became very famous all over the world. She gained a reputation for being America’s first professional astronomer and became one of the very few women known to have discovered a comet.

She received worldwide acclaim for discovering a new comet which she first spotted in the sky on October 1, 1847. The comet was named "Miss Mitchell's Comet" after her, and she became one of the few women ever to have discovered a comet.