Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)
Once upon a time (1750 to be precise)… in a land far, far away (Hanover in Germany) a girl was born to a musician and his wife. As one of ten children, and a girl, Caroline Herschel didn’t get a lot of status in her family. To make matters worse when she was three she contracted smallpox, which left her scarred and blind in one eye and then when she was ten she was struck down with typhus, which stopped her growth, leaving her only 4ft 3in in height. Because Caroline had these physical differences from other girls, her parents assumed that no man would want to marry her, and instead planned to put her to work as a maid, thinking she could not amount to much more.
Not everyone in Caroline’s family was so unkind though. Caroline had an older brother called William, who was a very successful and charismatic chap. He had been a musician like their father and then served his time in the military. After his service he moved to Bath in England to pursue his interest in astronomy. On a trip back to the family home in 1772 after the death of his father, he found Caroline banished to working in the family’s kitchen. Enraged at the treatment of his beloved little sister, he decided to rescue her from her place of servitude and take her back to Bath with him, where she would be treated as an equal and not as a servant.
Back in Bath, William taught Caroline (or his dear “Lina” as he oft called her) singing, and shared with her his passion for astronomy. Caroline quickly showed great talent and aptitude for the subject and great skill at working the telescope and handling the equipment, although poor Caroline was injured once more, when she got impaled on a large hook when making observations! With time Caroline learned to record, reduce, and organise her brother’s astronomical observations. William was so impressed with his sister’s work he insisted that she start making observations on her own.
By the 1790s Caroline had discovered several comets, a few of which were named after her, becoming the first woman ever to do this. Bored with the idea of society, and not feeling fulfilled by her musical hobby, Caroline wanted to become a recognised, professional astronomer like her big brother. After much patience – and after discovering eight comets – King George III finally granted Caroline an annual salary of £50 for her work as William's assistant.
Other astronomers had been mapping the sky before William and Caroline, but their joint observations revealed many inconsistencies in other published catalogues. William realised that a proper cross-index was needed in order to properly explore the stars but didn’t want to do it himself as it would take too much time – time he would rather spend on making more observations. So he entrusted the whopping task to little Lina. The resulting Catalogue of Stars was published by the Royal Society in 1798, and included a list of more than 560 stars that William and Caroline had been the first to observe.
William died in 1822, and Caroline decided to move back to Germany, but although devastated at the loss of her brother, she did not abandon her work. Se continued alongside her nephew John Herschel, discovering and cataloguing newlt discovered nebulae. In 1835 she was one of the first women to be given honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society. On her 96th birthday, Caroline was awarded the King of Prussia's Gold Medal of Science for her life long achievements. Since her death in 1848 she has had stars, an asteroid and even a crater on the moon named after her. She has continued to inspire astronomers, and is proof that even physical impairments don’t have to stand in the way of following a dream. Now that is a ‘happily ever after’.
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