Mary Somerville and the cultivation of science, 1815–1840
Mary Somerville and the cultivation of science, 1815–1840
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玛丽·萨默维尔和科学的培育，1815-1840
DOI：
10.1017/s002572730003653x
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发表时间：
1984
期刊：
影响因子：
1.4
通讯作者：
J. Morrell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Morrell
伊丽莎白·钱伯斯·帕特森，玛丽·萨默维尔和科学的培养，1815-1840，波士顿，马萨诸塞州。《海牙》，Martinus Nijhoff， 1983年第8期，第13页，264页，Dfl.90.00/$39.50。1879年，牛津大学的一所女子学院以玛丽·萨默维尔（Mary Somerville, 1780-1872）的名字命名，这是她获得的最珍贵的荣誉之一。给予她这样的永生是有充分理由的。1829年，就连对骗子特别敏感的大卫·布鲁斯特（David Brewster）也评价萨默维尔夫人“无疑是欧洲最杰出的女性，她是一流的数学家，既有女人的温柔，又有孩子的纯朴....”她也是一位伟大的自然哲学家和矿物学家。”伊丽莎白·帕特森（Elizabeth Patterson）的编年史详细阐述了这样一篇悼词的原因，该书主要从科学的角度考虑了她在伦敦生活的25年，直到1840年她离开英国，在意大利度过余生。帕特森的传记，其出色的索引，为萨默维尔夫人的自传（1873）增加了大量的信息，之前的标准来源。这本书特别揭示了她作为自然哲学家和数学家的学徒生涯，以及她在伦敦和巴黎的沙龙生活。如果说维多利亚时代的一些男性科学家，如查尔斯·莱尔（Charles Lyell）驯服了妻子，那么萨默维尔夫人嫁给了一位医生，帕特森将他描述为谦卑的典范，因为他同情地鼓励妻子，并为妻子的成就感到自豪。然而，他也是一个坚定的野心家。1819年，他开始在切尔西医院工作，年薪700至800英镑。1840年退休时，他每年只拿600英镑的半薪，这一交易激怒了《泰晤士报》，将他贬为“墨尔本部长们亲密而勤奋的跟班”。这本杂志的读者很可能会失望地发现，萨默维尔夫人对医学不感兴趣，但他们会被她那被征服的、仍然神秘的丈夫的生活细节所吸引。杰克·莫雷尔布拉德福德大学
ELIZABETH CHAMBERS PATTERSON, Mary Somerville and the cultivation ofscience, 1815-1840, Boston, Mass., and The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1983, 8vo, pp. xiii, 264, Dfl.90.00/$39.50. In 1879, Mary Somerville (1780-1872) received one of the most prized forms of eponymous recognition when a women's college at Oxford was named after her. There was good cause for conferring such immortality upon her. In 1829, no less than David Brewster, a man peculiarly sensitive to charlatanry, judged Mrs Somerville to be "certainly the most extraordinary woman in Europea mathematician of the very first rank, with the gentleness of a woman, and all the simplicity of a child.... She is also a great natural philosopher and a great mineralogist". The reasons for such a eulogy are set out with comprehensive detail in Elizabeth Patterson's chronological account, which considers mainly the scientific aspects of her London-based life for the twenty-five years to 1840 when she left England to live in Italy for the rest of her days. Patterson's biography, with its excellent index, adds a great deal of information to the autobiography of Mrs Somerville (1873), previously the standard source. It is especially revealing about her apprenticeship qua natural philosopher and mathematician, and about salon life in London and Paris. If some Victorian male scientists such as Charles Lyell had tamed wives, Mrs Somerville married a medical man whom Patterson depicts as a paragon of humility in his sympathetic encouragement to his wife, in whose accomplishments he gloried. Yet he was also a determined careerist who became physician to the Chelsea Hospital, worth £700-£800 a year when he began there in 1819. On his retirement in 1840, he was put on half-pay at £600 a year, a transaction which provoked The Times to denigrate him as "a close and assiduous hanger-on among the Melbourne ministers". Readers of this journal may well be disappointed to discover that medical science was of no interest to Mrs Somerville, but they will be intrigued by the details about the life of her subjugated and still enigmatic husband. Jack Morrell University of Bradford