Mary Somerville was a great woman scientist and author of the first textbook in physical geography in the English language ( Physical Geography , first edition, 1848). She was born Mary Fairfax on Boxing Day, 1780, in Jedburgh, Scotland, the daughter of an admiral. Her first husband, Samuel Grieg, whom she married in 1804, died three years later, and in 1812 she remarried, her second husband being Dr William Somerville. As a girl she was given little formal education but taught herself basic science. She and her second husband, who encouraged her scientific aspirations, became members of the scholarly literary and scientific set in the London of the 1820s and had as personal friends some of the greatest explorers and scientists of the age. In 1869 she was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, while in 1879 a college was established in Oxford, and named after her. Sanderson (1974, p.420) has summarized her contribution thus:
Mary Somerville was an outstanding...
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Bibliography
Baker, J. N. L., 1963. Mary Somerville and geography in England. In J. N. L. Baker (ed.), The History of Geography. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sanderson, M., 1974. Mary Somerville. Her work in physical geography. Geog. Rev., 64, 410–20.
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Goudie, A.S. (1999). Somerville, Mary (1780–1872). In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_314
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