In the sixties when I spent a year at Bucknell University, I was a member of the "Department of Astronomy and Mathematics," a pairing of related disciplines. In past centuries, Mathematics was included in the liberal arts. In the twenty-first century often it is paired with Computer Science, and Astronomy is paired with Physics. And so it goes.
Poems by Laura Long tell of the pioneering work by astronomer Caroline Herschel -- a discoverer of eight comets, a cataloger of stars. Long describes her recent collection, The Eye of Caroline Herschel: A Life in Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2013), in this way:
This is a work of the imagination steeped in historical siftings
and the breath between the lines.
Here is the opening poem:
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Saturday, July 21, 2012
She had a way with numbers
In Letters from a Floating World, artist and poet Siv Cedering (1939-2007) has given us a poignant portrait of astronomer (and math-woman) Caroline Herschel:
Letter from Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) by Siv Cedering
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
Labels:
astronomy,
calculations,
Caroline Herschel,
intuition,
mathematics,
numbers,
poem,
poetry,
Siv Cedering,
stars
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