Maria Mitchell (Nantucket, Massachusetts, 1818 – Lynn, Massachusetts, 1889)

“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future.

… The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered”.

Fragments de: Phebe Mitchell Kendall, Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals, Boston: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1896, p. 186-187. [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015033356646;view=1up;seq=202]

Per conèixer més:

Helen Wright, Sweeper in the Sky: The Life of Maria Mitchell, First Woman Astronomer in America, New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Helen L. Morgan, Maria Mitchell, First Lady of American Astronomy, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977

Renée L. Bergland, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics, Boston: Beacon Press, 2008.

Paraules de Dones de Ciència 2018:  https://goo.gl/6i372B