I recently read a news article about something recorded by the Herschel space telescope.  Needless to say, the name brought to mind William (1738-1822) and John (1792-1871) of that ilk; nevertheless there is a third Herschel,  not much mentioned these days, who could claim at least an equal right to be commemorated:  Caroline Lucretia.

Caroline Herschel was born in 1750, in Hannover.  Unhappily for her, but probably happily for the science of astronomy, she contracted in childhood an illness that left her with stunted growth and unattractive features.  Not good marriage meat, in other words.  Her ghastly mother responded to this disaster by casting Herschel as (literally) the family slave, and banished her to the kitchen and the scrubbing-brush.

Fortunately, Herschel had that irrelevant female attribute, a good brain, and also a father who, uncharacteristically for his time, appreciated it.  She endured life in the scullery until her father died in 1767, whereupon she attempted to study academically in order to become self-supporting, but it was not until 1772 that her brother William, who was by then an organist and music teacher in Bath, invited her to come live with him as his housekeeper.  Over her mother’s strident objections, Herschel emigrated to a happier life, where William shared with her his own interests, music, singing, mathematics and astronomy, subjects which been unattainable to her as a child, thanks to her mother’s objections to educating a daughter:  “My father wished to give me something like a polished education, but my mother was particularly determined that it should be a rough but at the same time a useful one; and nothing further she thought was necessary but to send me two or three months to a seamstress to be taught to make household linen....My mother would not consent to my being taught French, and my brother Dietrich was even denied a dancing-master, because she would not permit my learning along with him, though the entrance had been paid for us both”.

William Herschel was then occupied with building telescopes for his own hobby of astronomical observations.  Freed (like Florence Nightingale but in a very different way) from the demands of husband and children, Caroline started as his assistant, as she was the one with both the practical talents required to build good telescopes, and the patience to study and gain expertise in trigonometry, neither of which plodding aspects apparently appealed to William; William, initially,  was the observer but it was Caroline who had the patience and application to do the donkey-work of collating and systematizing his results.  Inevitably, this meant that she sacrificed any inclinations to do her own original work.

In 1781, William discovered Uranus, and was rewarded by George III with a salary of £200 per year; in 1782 William in turn rewarded Caroline with the gift of her very own telescope, and she promptly began a programme of independent research, systematically looking for comets. Over the next few years she recorded several previously unrecorded astronomical objects, including eight comets, the first of which was kindly described by a contemporary as “the first lady-comet”, and in 1787 George III recognised her status by appointing her William’s assistant at a salary of £50.

In 1797, her independent research was again put on hold as William volunteered her as the editor/reviser of  Flamsteed’s star catalogue, which he needed but which was seriously out-of-date. 

William died in 1822 and Caroline returned to Hannover, but continued her astronomical work, both verifying and confirming William’s observations and assisting the education and training of the next generation of astronomers, her nephew John Herschel.  She died in 1848.

Her recognition in her own lifetime was two-sided.  On the one hand, she was awarded in 1828 with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the first woman so honoured, and for her own work:  a catalogue of 2500 nebulae;  and in 1835 was elected to honorary membership of that Society (not full membership, because she was a woman).  Further honours followed from outside Britain.  (After her death, an asteroid (281 Lucretia) and a moon crater (C. Herschel) commemorate her.)

On the other hand, Caroline as scientist was a victim of the subtle and not-so-subtle denigration applied to her gender.  She has tended, long after her death, to be regarded as secondary to the other Herschels, despite the fact that, as with Rosalind Franklin, hers was the basic work on which the whole depended.  It is nice to know that in Caroline’s case, the recognition came during her own lifetime, but such recognition was not to the taste of everyone:

“.....while she was a thrifty and interested housekeeper, she had neither the taste, the ambition, nor the mental qualities, that would have insured distinction in an independent intellectual career. It is seen that she became an astronomer by accident, as it were, and through the strength of her affection rather than of her intellect. When she found that her brother had resolved to take her as his assistant in his astronomic labors, it made her miserable for a time; and he chose her instead of either of his brothers, not because of her brilliant mind, but on account of her persevering devotion to his interests and her dexterity and readiness in doing an assistant's work.

The lesson of this book is very important to ambitious girls who despise domestic concerns, and long for an "intellectual" career. Her science, as such, gave Miss Herschel no great enjoyment; her happiness came from her womanly devotion to her brother's ambitious work; and the book[i] will be found painfully interesting as it discloses the suffering she also experienced as the penalty of this unselfish devotion.....Whatever may be thought of the intellectual differences between men and women, the broad mental contrast between Caroline Herschel and her brother Sir William Herschel is undeniable. Intellectual activity and a love of knowledge for its own sake influenced his boyhood, characterized his manhood, and dominated his whole life. He became an eminent astronomer because his passion for physical inquiry, directed toward the constitution of the universe, mastered every other sentiment of his nature. But the mind of Caroline Herschel was of another mould. She learned various things, from a desire to please her friends and to earn her living; but there is no evidence that she ever studied anything from a love of knowledge.”[ii]

The near-miracle of an abused child and young woman, forcibly kept in subjection and ignorance, having the courage to escape and the mental capacity and drive to acquire advanced knowledge and technical skills in adult life, seems completely to have escaped this reviewer!