Caroline Herschel - Infinite Women

Born: 16 March 1750, Germany
Died: 9 January 1848
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA

This biography, written by J J O’Connor and E F Robertson, has been republished with permission from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Caroline Herschel was the daughter of Isaac Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen. She was sister of William Herschel and the aunt of John Herschel. Caroline’s father Isaac was an oboist in the Hanovarian Foot Guards and rose to become the bandmaster. Although a man with no formal education, he tried hard to give his four sons and two daughters a good education. His interests in music, philosophy and astronomy led to lively conversations in their home but Caroline’s mother disapproved of learning in general and although she reluctantly accepted that her four sons should have some education, she strongly opposed her daughters doing anything other than the household chores.
Caroline Herschel’s four brothers were all brought up to be musicians while Caroline showed an enthusiasm for knowledge which her father tried to satisfy despite all her mother’s efforts to ensure that she did nothing but household tasks. Caroline recalled that her father took her:-
… on a clear frosty night into the street, to make me acquainted with several of the beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which was then visible.
Caroline could never have thought in her wildest dreams that one day she would make a major contribution to the study of comets.
After the French occupation of Hanover in 1757, Isaac was occupied fighting the French and so was not at home. William escaped to England, where he became a music teacher, and Caroline was left under the control of her mother who sent her to learn to knit and otherwise kept her fully occupied with household chores. In 1760 Isaac returned home in poor health and Caroline essentially lived the life of a servant until he died in 1767. The death of her father seems to have made Caroline realise that she had to take some control of her own life and she took lessons in dressmaking and studied to qualify as a governess. However, fitting in the studies while her mother demanded so much work from her proved a great strain.
In 1766 William became an organist in Bath and, in 1772, Caroline joined him there. She made this move despite strong protests from her mother who was very unhappy at effectively losing a servant. Caroline had always been very close to her brother William and, after arriving in Bath, she trained as a singer receiving lessons from her brother. William taught Caroline more than musical skills. He had studied mathematics and astronomy in his spare time at the end of a long day after many hours teaching music, reading works such as Maclaurin’s Fluxions. Now he began to teach Caroline English and mathematics while he himself became more and more involved with astronomy.
Caroline began giving successful singing performances:-
As first treble in the Messiah, Judas Macabaeus, etc., she sang at Bath or Bristol sometimes five nights in the week, but declined an engagement for the Birmingham festival, having resolved to appear only where her brother conducted.
In addition to her singing, Caroline helped William with his musical activities and looked after him while he spent many hours with his new hobby of constructing telescopes. Slowly Caroline turned more and more towards helping William with his astronomical activities while he continued to teach her algebra, geometry and trigonometry. In particular Caroline studied spherical trigonometry which would be important for reducing astronomical observations. However, she was not interested in mathematics for its own sake, finding only those parts which were useful in applications worth studying.
Almost inevitably Caroline’s role changed from looking after William to helping him with his scientific activities which soon occupied every available moment. Caroline wrote:-
Every leisure moment was eagerly snatched at for resuming some work which was in progress, without taking time or changing dress, and many a lace ruffle … was torn or bespattered by molten pitch. … I was even obliged to feed him by putting the vitals by bits into his mouth; – this was once the case when at the finishing of a 7 foot mirror he had not left his hands from it for 16 hours …
Astronomy changed from a hobby for William in 1781 when he achieved fame by discovering the planet now named Uranus. King George III gave William a £200 per year salary which was less than generous but sufficient to allow him to become a full-time astronomer. Giving up their musical activities the Herschels moved to Datchet in August 1782 where they remained until June 1785 when they moved again, this time into Clay Hall, near Windsor. It was certainly not without many regrets that Caroline abandoned music and began to take an active part in astronomy. William gave her a telescope with which she began to make observations, in particular searching for comets making methodical sweeps of the sky.
Caroline found much less time than she expected to make her own observations as she became fully involved helping William with his astronomical projects. By day Caroline would work on the results obtained by William while observing on the previous night. She carried out the lengthy calculations necessary to reduce William’s data with remarkable accuracy. In fact only when William was away from home was Caroline able to spend much time with her own program of research. In April 1786 William and Caroline moved to a new home they called Observatory House which was in Slough and there, on 1 August 1786, Caroline discovered her first comet which was described by some as the “first lady’s comet”. This discovery brought Caroline a certain degree of fame and articles were written about her. In one such article she is described as:-
… very little, very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous…
while another describes her as:-
… a most excellent, kind-hearted creature…
In 1787 King George III gave Caroline a £50 per year salary as assistant to William. In the following year William married Mary Pitt and Caroline’s life changed markedly:-
Initially Caroline was deeply affected by the marriage, and moved out to lodgings at Upton. She continued to support her brother’s work and in making the daily walk to Observatory House, became a well-known figure. Often, with William resting after a long night of observation, the house was kept as quiet as possible during the day. Eventually the relationship between the two ladies – Mary and Caroline – warmed …
Caroline kept a diary into which she had recorded her thoughts, in particular she had recorded her great distress at the change in relationship with her brother and she also recorded her bitterness towards his wife. However, as the relationship between the two ladies improved, Caroline regretted her bitter comments against Mary and she destroyed every page of her diary over this time in her life.
In total Caroline discovered eight comets between 1786 and 1797 and she then embarked on a new project of cross-referencing and correcting the star catalogue which had been produced by Flamsteed. In 1798 Caroline submitted to the Royal Society an Index to Flamsteed’s Observations of the Fixed Stars together with a list of 560 stars which had been omitted. This publication marked the temporary end of her own researches which she would not begin again until 25 years later after William’s death.
This period of 25 years was not one which lacked interest for Caroline. She became involved with the education of John Herschel, William and Mary Herschel’s son who was born in 1792. John Herschel spent long periods with his aunt during the vacations and was greatly influenced by Caroline. She saw him educated at Cambridge, make a name for himself as a mathematician, become elected to the Royal Society, join his father in research in astronomy and be awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his achievements. Caroline continued to assist William with his observations but her status had greatly improved from the housekeeper she had been in her young days. She was the guest of Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory in 1799 and a guest of members of the Royal Family at various times in 1816, 1817 and 1818.
Caroline returned to Hanover after William’s death in 1822. In many ways it was a bad decision, made too quickly, which she soon regretted but she was always one to keep a promise whatever the personal consequences so she would never return to England. All her energies had been directed towards helping her brother in his astronomical work during his lifetime but now she turned to help his son John Herschel. Certainly this help was not given in the same way as a personal assistant, but rather now as independent researcher producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist John in his astronomical work. She completed her catalogue of 2500 nebulae and, in 1828, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her its gold medal for this work.
Although Caroline regretted spending her last 25 years in Hanover there were many compensations. She was now a celebrity in the world of science and she was visited by many scientists including Gauss. Her nephew John Herschel, visiting Caroline in June 1832 when she was 83 years old, wrote of her:-
She runs about the town with me, and skips up her two flights of stairs. In the morning, till eleven or twelve, she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite ‘fresh and funny’ at ten p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances.
Caroline Herschel received many honours for her scientific achievements. Together with Mary Somerville, she was elected to honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835. They were the first honorary women members. She was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1838 and then on her 96th birthday she received a letter:-
His Majesty the King of Prussia, in recognition of the valuable service rendered to astronomy by you, as the fellow worker of your immortal brother, wishes to convey to you in his name the Large Gold Medal for science.
On her 97th birthday Caroline:-
… entertained the crown prince and princess with great animation for two hours, even singing to them a composition of her brother William.
A minor planet was named Lucretia in 1889 in Caroline Lucretia Herschel’s honour, a fitting tribute to one who had contributed so much, yet had so little personal ambition that she disliked praise directed towards her lest it detract from her brother William.

The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.

Sister, and, for a long time, assistant of the celebrated astronomer was born at Hanover, on the 16th. of March, 1750. She is herself distinguished for her astronomical researches, and particularly for the construction of a seienographical globe, in relief, of the surface of the moon. But it was for her brother. Sir William Herschel, that the activity of her mind was awakened. From the first commencement of his astronomical pursuits, her attendance on both his daily labours and nightly watches was put in requisition; and was found so useful, that on his removal to Datchet, and subsequently to Slough—he being then occupied with his reviews of the heavens and other researches—she performed the whole of the arduous and important duties of his astronomical assistant, not only reading the clocks and noting down all the observations from dictation as an amanuensis, but subsequently executing the whole of the extensive and laborious numerical calculations necessary to render them available to science, as well as a multitude of others relative to the various objects of theoretical and experimental inquiry, in which during his long and active career, he at any time engaged. For the performance of these duties. His Majesty King George the Third was pleased to place her in the receipt of a salary sufficient for her singularly moderate wants and retired habits.
Arduous, however, as these occupations must appear, especially when it is considered that her brother’s observations were always carried on (circumstances permitting) till daybreak, without regard to season, and indeed chiefly in the winter, they proved insufficient to exhaust her activity. In their intervals she found time both for actual astronomical observations of her own, and for the execution of more than one work of great extent and utility.
The astronomical works which she found leisure to complete were—1st. “A Catalogue of five hundred and sixty-one Stars observed by Flamstead,” but which, having escaped the notice of those who framed the “British Catalogue” from that astronomer’s observations, are not therein inserted. 2nd. “A General Index of Reference to every Observation of every Star inserted in the British Catalogue.” These works were published together in one volume by the Royal Society; and to their utility in subsequent researches Mr. Baily, in his “Life of Flamsteed,” pp. 388, 390, bears ample testimony. She further completed the reduction and arrangement as a “Zone Catalogue” of all the nebulae and clusters of stars observed by her brother in his sweeps; a work for which she was honoured with the Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society of London, in 1828; which Society also conferred on her the unusual distinction of electing her an honorary member.
On her brother’s death, in 1822, she returned to Hanover, which she never again quitted, passing the last twenty-six years of her life in repose—enjoying the society and cherished by the regard of her remaining relatives and friends; gratified by the occasional visits of eminent astronomers; and honoured with many marks of favour and distinction on the part of the king of Hanover, the crown prince, and his amiable and illustrious consort.
To within a very short period of her death her health continued uninterrupted, her faculties perfect, and her memory (especially of the scenes and circumstances of former days) remarkably clear and distinct.
In 1847, she celebrated the ninety-seventh anniversary of her birth, when the king of Hanover sent to compliment her; the Prince and Princess Royal visited her; and the latter presented her with a magnificent arm-chair, embroidered by herself; and the King of Prussia sent her the gold medal awarded for the extension of the Sciences.
Miss Herschel died at the opening of the following year, January 9th., 1848, crowned with the glory which woman’s genius may gain, working in the way Divine Providence appointed her,—as the helper of man. Her end was tranquil and free from suffering—a simple cessation of life.

The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Agnes Mary Clerke.

HERSCHEL, CAROLINE LUCRETIA (1750–1848), astronomer, eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaac Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen, was born at Hanover on 16 March 1750. Her father’s desire to educate his youngest daughter was thwarted by his wife’s determination to keep her to household drudgery. He gave her a few surreptitious violin lessons, by which she was enabled to take part in his pupils’ concerts. She had no other accomplishment, except knitting. She roused herself from the ‘kind of stupefaction’ caused by her father’s death on 22 March 1767 to learn dressmaking, in order to earn her bread. She also attempted to qualify herself for a governess by practising fancy work in hours spared from sleep, though finding it ‘sometimes scarcely possible to get through the work required’ by her mother. Her brother William [q. v.], to whom she was from the first enthusiastically attached, now offered her a home at Bath, and she prepared herself for singing at concerts by imitating the violin parts of concertos with a gag between her teeth. In this way she ‘gained a tolerable execution’ before she attempted to sing. She reached Bath on 28 Aug. 1772.
Besides giving her two singing lessons daily, her brother taught her English and arithmetic; but her studies were from 1773 impeded by continual demands for aid in his astronomical pursuits. The summer of 1775 was ‘taken up with copying music and practising, besides attendance on my brother when polishing, since, by way of keeping him alive, I was constantly obliged to feed him by putting the victuals by bits into his mouth.’ Moreover, she read novels to him while he was at the turning-lathe or polishing mirrors, serving his meals without interrupting the work with which he was engaged, and sometimes lending a hand. ‘I became in time as useful a member of the workshop as a boy in the first year of his apprenticeship.’
Meanwhile, as a preparation for appearance in oratorios, she was being ‘drilled into a gentlewoman’ by a dancing-mistress; her brother presented her with ten guineas to buy a dress, and she was pronounced at her début ‘an ornament to the stage.’ Her success was considerable. As first treble in the ‘Messiah,’ ‘Judas Maccabæus,’ &c., she sang at Bath or Bristol sometimes five nights in the week, but declined an engagement for the Birmingham festival, having resolved to appear only where her brother conducted. Their last public performance was in St. Margaret’s Chapel, Bath, on Whit-Sunday, 1782.
At first she grudged the abandonment of music in order to be ‘trained for an assistant-astronomer.’ She began ‘sweeping’ on her own account with a small Newtonian reflector on 22 Aug. 1782 at Datchet, and in the following year discovered three remarkable nebulæ, one of them the well-known companion to the Andromeda nebula (No. 105 of Sir J. Herschel’s ‘General Catalogue’). From December 1783 she was absorbed in the arduous labour of assisting her brother. Her presence when he was observing was indispensable. She habitually worked with him till daybreak. She not only read the clocks and noted down his observations, but executed subsequently the whole of the extensive calculations involved. She brought the stars of the ‘British Catalogue’ into zones of one degree each for his ‘sweeps,’ copied his papers, and prepared his catalogues for the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ besides the occupations of housekeeping, needlework, and entertaining distinguished visitors. In her few leisure moments she ground and polished mirrors, and ‘was indulged with the last finishing of a very beautiful’ one for Sir William Watson.
Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered eight comets, five of them with undisputed priority. That of November 1795 was afterwards famous as ‘Encke’s comet.’ Some of the data relative to them are still preserved in a packet inscribed by her ‘Bills and Receipts of my Comets.’ The faint object detected on 1 Aug. 1786 was looked at with curiosity by Miss Burney as ‘the first lady’s comet.’ She described Miss Herschel as ‘very little, very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous’ (Madame d’Arblay, Diary, iii. 442, ed. 1842). Mrs. Papendick, though less sympathetic, says that she was ‘a most excellent, kind-hearted creature’ (Journals, i. 253).
In 1787 a salary of 50l. a year, the first money which she thought herself free to spend to her own liking, was settled by the king upon Miss Herschel as her brother’s assistant. After her brother’s marriage, on 8 May 1788, she lived in lodgings, but co-operated with him no less zealously than before. The change, though bravely borne, cost her severe pangs. On 8 March 1798 her ‘Index to Flamsteed’s Observations of the Fixed Stars’ was presented to the Royal Society, and was published at their expense with her list of ‘Errata’ to the same observations. The usefulness of a work which ‘contains a reference to every observation of every star in the British Catalogue’ was cordially acknowledged by Baily (Life of Flamsteed, pp. 388, 390).
In August 1799 Miss Herschel spent a week at the Royal Observatory, as the guest of Dr. Maskelyne; and from July to November 1800 she was at Bath, setting Alexander Herschel’s house in order. Her youngest brother, Dietrich, came to England in broken health in 1805, and she was much tried for the next four years by adding care for him to her other occupations. Miss Herschel was present at royal fêtes at Frogmore in 1816 and 1817, and saw much of the Princess Sophia in the autumn of 1818. From 1819 her brother William’s health caused her much anxiety. She assisted him in observing for the last time on 21 June 1821, and in the impetuosity of her grief for his death on 25 Aug. 1822, she carried out a hasty resolution to spend the remainder of her life with her relations in Hanover.
She regretted too late having ‘given herself and all she was worth’ to the German branch of her family, but would not ‘take back her promise.’ Her real interest was with Sir John Herschel’s career, and she felt keenly the intellectual isolation to which she had condemned herself. Before quitting England she had made over to her brother Dietrich her little funded property of 500l.; and her extreme frugality allowed room for further generosity to her poorer relations out of an income of 150l. a year, of which 100l. was a bequest from her brother William. She nursed Dietrich Herschel at his house in the Marktstrasse until his death in 1827, and made a final move in 1833 to No. 376 Braunschweigerstrasse.
For her ‘Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of a Catalogue in Zones of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel’ she received the Astronomical Society’s gold medal on 8 Feb. 1828 (Memoirs Royal Astr. Society, iii. 409), but was ‘more shocked than gratified’ by the distinction. This laborious work was styled by Sir David Brewster ‘an extraordinary monument of the inextinguishable ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science.’ Although never published, it was the most valuable of her undertakings, because indispensable to Sir John Herschel’s review of northern nebulæ. Miss Herschel was created an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835, and of the Royal Irish Academy in 1838. On the first occasion Mrs. Somerville transmitted to her a copy of ‘The Connexion of the Physical Sciences.’
Miss Herschel’s later years were cheered by many attentions. All men of science passing through Hanover, among them Gauss, Humboldt, and Mädler, called to see her. The royal family showed her constant kindness, and she had a particular regard for the Duke of Cambridge. Until 1839 her tiny figure was rarely absent from the theatre, where she was pleased to be noticed as a celebrity; she never missed a concert, and recorded her delight with Catalani and Paganini. A visit from her nephew in October 1824 afforded her vivid pleasure. During his next visit in June 1832 he wrote of her, then in her eighty-third year: ‘She runs about the town with me, and skips up her two flights of stairs. In the morning, till eleven or twelve, she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite “fresh and funny” at ten o’clock p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances! to the great delight of all who see her.’ Her ninety-sixth birthday was marked by Humboldt’s transmission to her, in the name of the king of Prussia, of the gold medal for science. On the succeeding anniversary she entertained the crown prince and princess with great animation for two hours, even singing to them a composition of her brother William. Her last letter was finished on 3 Dec. 1846, but she lived to hold in her hands, in her nephew’s ‘Cape Observations,’ the completion of the great celestial survey in which she had borne a share. She passed away tranquilly on 9 Jan. 1848, in her ninety-eighth year, and was buried with her parents in the churchyard of the ‘Gartengemeinde’ at Hanover. Her coffin was, by command of the princess royal, adorned with palm-branches, and, at her own request, contained a lock of her ‘revered brother’s’ hair; and the inscription on her tombstone, composed by herself, commemorated her ‘participation in his immortal labours.’
Caroline Herschel was absolutely without personal ambition, and jealous of her own praises lest they should seem to abate anything from her brother’s merits. ‘I did nothing for him,’ she protested, ‘but what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done.’ ‘My only reason,’ she wrote to her nephew, ‘for saying so much of myself is to show with what miserable assistance your father made shift to obtain the means of exploring the heavens.’ Her commonplace-book, by its numerous entries of elementary problems in mathematics and astronomy, picked up from her brother at odd moments, proves the diligence with which she acquired the scanty outfit which her alert intelligence rendered effective. Although her memory remained excellent to the last, she records that she could never remember the multiplication table. Her portrait, painted by Tielemann in 1829, which she declared to ‘look like life itself,’ is in the possession of her grand-nephew, Sir William J. Herschel. An engraving from a later likeness, taken at the age of ninety-seven, forms the frontispiece to Mrs. John Herschel’s ‘Memoir.’ The Newtonian seven-foot reflector, with which many of her discoveries had been made from the roof of the house at Slough, was presented in 1840 by her and Sir John Herschel jointly to the Royal Astronomical Society. Her gold medal, bequeathed to her grand-niece, Lady Gordon, was given by her to Girton College, Cambridge. Minor planet No. 281 was named ‘Lucretia’ in her honour by M. Palisa in 1889. The materials for her own and her brother’s biographies are derived chiefly from her ‘Journals’ and ‘Recollections’ written at various periods, with a fragment of a ‘History of the Herschels’ begun in 1842.