Astronomer’s biography skimps on the science

Although the lives of select female astronomers, such as Caroline Herschel, have been well documented, books about women who conducted astronomical studies before the 20th century are generally few and far between. In The Hidden Giants (2006), Sethanne Howard reported on the lives and contributions of women scientists, including astronomers, throughout 4000 years of history. More recently, Dava Sobel told the story of Harvard computers in The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars (2016).

When I first heard about Tracy Daugherty’s new book, Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens, what most piqued my interest was the subtitle. I was expecting to read about the scientific contributions of yet another female astronomer whose story has been hidden or relegated to footnotes. I also expected to learn more about Dante and how Mary Acworth Evershed (née Orr), the Victorian woman in the title, interpreted his astronomy as written in his poetry.

The title, however, is misleading. Although Daugherty includes some information about Mary Evershed and her work, how she “opened the heavens” is not the primary focus. The author, a distinguished professor of English and creative writing emeritus at Oregon State University, has penned an imaginative account that focuses instead on Mary’s husband, John, and other male astronomers with whom the couple interacted, including E. Walter Maunder. I found this read to be less the story of a woman astronomer and more the story of John (mostly) and Mary (sometimes). The science is scarce, and the adventure consists of travelogues and descriptions of everyday life at an observatory in India at the start of the 20th century.

Mary made two major contributions to astronomy. Based on her own observations, she created the first thorough atlas of southern stars, which was published in 1897. She also documented the history of the named lunar craters in a 1938 publication. Both contributions indeed “opened the heavens,” but the author spends just a few paragraphs describing them and glosses over the scientific details. In contrast, Daugherty uses a little over four pages to describe what we currently know about the Sun.

Dante and the Early Astronomer also spends a great deal of time describing John’s struggles as director of the observatory in Kodaikanal, India. We read details about its less-than-modern infrastructure and its poor-quality and poorly maintained equipment. We also learn, multiple times, about John’s own dissatisfaction with his place in history and his potential legacy as a solar astronomer.

The title of the book is borrowed from Mary herself, who published the original Dante and the Early Astronomers in 1913. But Daugherty provides us with few references to her interpretations of Dante’s publications. The author tells us—often, and without citation—that Mary ruminated on the accuracy of Dante’s cosmography in The Divine Comedy but does not clearly relay the importance of her contributions. The frequent mentions of Mary’s doting attention to John’s mental and physical health overshadow the science and adventure I was promised in the subtitle.

As stated on the jacket, the book is a “creative tale” written by an author who brings “keen skill as a fiction writer.” But Daugherty takes too much artistic license when telling the story of Mary and John as a couple. He provides a great deal of speculation without much support. For example, based on a casually draped arm in one photo, Daugherty suggests that John had an adulterous affair with a family friend who cared for Mary while she was ill; he eventually married the woman after Mary’s death. Furthermore, the author’s description of astronomer Annie Maunder as “frumpy,” Mary as “gaunt,” and John as “handsome and distinguished” in a photo from one of their last excursions together reminded me of recent conversations about journalists’ tendency to describe women in ways in which they do not describe men.

Even with those flaws, Daugherty’s material on the operations of the observatory, including the focus on obtaining solar data and the lifestyle of its astronomers, is enlightening. Descendants of John’s employees carry on the work at Kodaikanal today. I also appreciated the interwoven story of the Eversheds’ reactions to astronomical observations that changed our views of the heavens and the challenges they faced chasing solar eclipses to prove the theory of general relativity. Mary’s persistence and self-direction in teaching herself about astronomy was also well described.

If you can read Dante and the Early Astronomer as a work of creative history, then you may gain some insight into the life of Mary Orr Evershed. The bibliography is extensive, and I surmise that readers can learn more about Mary from the historical primary sources. However, as a stand-alone read, the title’s promise of “science” from a “woman who opened the heavens” goes unfulfilled.