Mary Somerville was a self-taught polymath, with a deep knowledge of math, astronomy, and geology – just to name a few. She published her treatise, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, in 1834. The scientific historian William Whewell read Somerville’s treatise and loved it. He wanted to write a glowing review. He encountered a problem, however: the term at the time for such an author would have been “man of science,” and that just didn’t fit Somerville.
So Whewell did something that would put his name in the history books. He decided to call Somerville a “scientist.” He intended the term to show the interdisciplinary nature of Somerville’s treatise. Not just a mathematician, astronomer, or physicist, Somerville had the knowledge and intellect to weave them all together. He invented a gender-neutral term which would become more popular than the term Whewell was trying to work around.
Somerville might have had something to do with the popularity of “scientist.” She wrote nine subsequent editions of On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, updating it for the rest of her life. These were not purely academic endeavors; they led to material changes. In the third edition, for instance, Somerville wrote that difficulties in calculating Uranus’s position may indicate the existence of an undiscovered planet. This led to the discovery of Neptune. While not a household name, many of her ideas appeared in 20th century textbooks, and her name can be found throughout academic halls and in which she made an impact: Oxford’s Somerville College bears her name, as do one of the Committee Rooms of the Scottish Parliament, a main-belt asteroid (5771 Somerville), and a lunar crater in the eastern part of the Moon.
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