In the United States, March is National Women's History Month -- and today I am looking back to previous postings that celebrate astronomer and mathematician Caroline Herschel. In her collection Letters from the Floating World, artist and poet Siv Cedering (1939-2007) has given us a poignant portrait of this math-woman:
Letter from Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) by Siv Cedering
William is away, and I am minding
the heavens. I have discovered
eight new comets and three nebulae
never before seen by man,
and I am preparing an Index to
Flamsteed's observations, together with
a catalogue of 560 stars omitted from
the British Catalogue, plus a list of errata
in that publication. William says
I have a way with numbers, so I handle
all the necessary reductions and
calculations. I also plan
every night's observation
schedule, for he says my intuition
helps me turn the telescope to discover
star cluster after star cluster. . . .
The rest of this poem is found here in this posting from 2012.
Additional poetry that celebrates Herschel may be found at this link.
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