Born: 18 April 1788, United Kingdom
Died: 9 February 1869
Country most active: International
Also known as: Charlotte Hugonin
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Charlotte Murchison and Mary Horner Lyell are more of our many overlooked wives, who worked with their husbands, Roderick Impey Murchison and Charles Lyell. Both women accompanied their husbands on expeditions and worked as illustrators. Mary was a significant but uncredited contributor to Charles’s 1830s book, Principles of Geology. She is also known for her studies on evolution, having worked with Charles Darwin and conducted a study in 1854 of Canary Island’s land snails comparable to Darwin’s of Galapagos tortoises. Darwin praised her not least as “a monument of patience” when collaborating with himself and her husband.
Meanwhile, Charlotte collected and studied fossils, with other geologists of the time studying and publishing works about fossils in her collection. She was so adamant about attending Charles Lyell’s lectures that she convinced him to open them to women. She also helped her husband develop his publications, including providing illustrations. Indeed, as Mary Somerville wrote of Charlotte, “… she had studied science, especially geology, and it was chiefly owing to her exemplar that her husband turned his mind to those pursuits in which he afterwards obtained such distinction.” Archibald Geikie wrote in 1875, “to his wife he owed his fame, as he never failed gracefully to record,” yet not enough to acknowledge her as a contributor to his prolific output (180 papers and three books).