December 8, 2010
Caroline Herschel: Assistant or Astronomer?
A statue of William and Caroline Herschel on the wall of the back garden at the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, Bath (photo by Sarah Zielinski)
After a recent visit to the National Air and Space Museum’s “Explore the Universe” exhibit, a local astronomy post-doc, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, wrote the following about one of the displays:
[I]magine my dismay when I got to the section about Caroline and William Herschel, a sister-brother team of astronomers, and saw their names attached to the following titles: William Herschel: The Complete Astronomer [and] Caroline Herschel: William’s Essential Assistant. …
The paragraph describing Caroline goes on to begin, “A fine astronomer in her own right . . . ” Well, if she was an astronomer, how come she doesn’t get the same label as her brother? What kind of message does this send to the young girls and boys who will potentially be exposed to astronomy for the first time in this exhibit? Caroline Herschel is the first woman (of only three) mentioned in the exhibit, and it seems her claim to fame is having been in the employ of her genius brother.
I’m not suggesting that Caroline’s contributions be exaggerated — simply that astronomers should be labeled as such.
Since I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the Herschels recently, Caroline in particular, I started wondering whether NASM had got it wrong, whether they had underplayed Caroline’s role in astronomy. And so I made my way to the museum to check it out.
“Explore the Universe” demonstrates how the science of observing the heavens has changed through technology, from Galileo’s telescope to Hubble and beyond. The Herschels are in a display that includes a partial replica of William’s 20-foot telescope—one of several he made in his lifetime—along with a few other artifacts. A musical piece of William’s own composition—his Oboe Concerto in C Major—plays in the background interspersed with a conversation between William and Caroline. William can be heard at the eyepiece of his telescope, calling out observations to Caroline, who would have faithfully recorded them. Not only does it exemplify their professional relationship—observer and assistant—but the playful banter in which Caroline reprimands William to practice his English in case a member of the royal court should appear speaks to their fondness as brother and sister.
The description of Caroline reads:
A fine astronomer in her own right—she found eight comets—Caroline Herschel assisted her brother in his observations and telescope building. Margaret Herschel described Caroline’s many roles:
“She learned enough of mathematics and of methods of calculation…to be able to commit to writing the results of his researches. She became his assistant in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope in the nights of mid-winter, to write down his observations, when the very ink was frozen in the bottle.“
After William died, Caroline prepared a catalog of all the nebulae and star clusters he had observed. For this achievement, she received a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, a high honor that would not be granted to another woman for more than a century and a half.
Given the constraints of a museum display, this is a fair description of Caroline’s contributions. And calling her “William’s Essential Assistant” is necessary given the overall design of that display; the astronomer-assistant relationship needs to be established quickly (especially since many people won’t bother to read all of the text) for the audio to make sense.
I agree with Prescod-Weinstein’s observation that too often women in the history of science have been overlooked as assistants, but that is not the case with Caroline Herschel, who was recognized during her life and afterward for both her pivotal role in helping her brother and for her own discoveries. And if I have only one word to label her, I’ll call her “astronomer.”
There is a tendency among some, in their efforts toward equality, to overinflate the role of the earliest female scientists. However, that does a disservice to these women and their struggles; their stories help to explain why they are worthy of being remembered and why women are not always equal in the world of science.
Caroline Herschel’s mother brought her up to be the household drudge, barely educated and fit for little more than maid’s work. Her brother William rescued her, taking her to England to be his housekeeper and assist his musical career (at the time, he was a conductor and musician in Bath). Caroline became a successful singer at the same time she managed the household and assisted in William’s hobbies of stargazing and telescope making. And when William became a professional astronomer, entering the king’s service, Caroline followed, giving up her own musical career and devoting her life to astronomy as well. Without her, William may never have been as great an astronomer.
That amazing story, however, from Cinderella to professional astronomer—Caroline was the first women to receive a salary for stargazing, for assisting William—doesn’t fit easily into a museum display, particularly one focused on instrumentation. Caroline Herschel was both assistant and astronomer, as NASM’s display indicates, and to leave out either role is to ignore much of her spectacular journey.
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“A Brother and Sister Astronomer Team” might be a more apt title. Just because someone begins as a trainee or assistant, at some point they step out and make contributions in their own right as a colleague (not so dissimilar from the process of PhD training today) The further description of Caroline’s activities shows she clearly did this, especially evidenced by the continents of work after William’s death. I agree with the visitor’s original comment that the high level exhibit caption diminishes the female scientist’s contribution. -Bethany Ehlmann, Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale
considerable work, that is
(the dangers of iPhone autocorrect)
I’m sorry, but I call BS. Sure, she assisted with her brother’s observations- many astronomers assist each other along the way, but we would never call each other “assistants”. If, as you say, she should be primarily called an astronomer, then she should be labeled as such, and the tone should not have come off as “oh by the way, she was a pretty good astronomer too”. Perhaps a better description, that would come off slightly less diminishing, would have started by saying her astronomy career developed out of her time assisting her brother’s with his observations, which grew to become more collaborative in nature… or something along those lines, an of course changing her label to “Astronomer, and William’s Essential Assistant”.
Thank you Sarah for taking an interest in my critique of the exhibit. I’m glad that we both share an interest in the story of Caroline Herschel!
I would like to tack on to Dr. Ehlmann’s very apt point about starting as a trainee. I am now entering my eleventh year participating in research in physics and astronomy. I, like everyone else, began as an assistant/trainee. As our skills evolve, we become more able to independently shape and complete projects, such as doing our cosmology hunting (or in Caroline’s case, comet hunting). We go out into the world, doctorates in hand, as people who, through assisting, trained to become astronomers. When we are remembered later in life, we will, I hope, not be remembered as assistants. We will be remembered for how we ended: astronomers.
I would also like to point out part of what makes Caroline’s story so extraordinary. During a time when women were expected to keep house without assistance from their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, Caroline managed to find the time to not only assist her brother in his work but also to do work of her own. This is an incredible feat, and one that I greatly admire in an era where women (and now men) are still struggling with the dual duties of professional astronomy and domestic life. Caroline was the first of many women who have and will overcome this challenge, and in that she had no assistance.
I look forward to a day when I visit NASM to find extraordinary accomplishments like that one celebrated by the side of the ones that have more traditionally been honored.
It’s hard to even understand the point that the author here is making. Both she, and the exhibit itself (albeit as an aside), acknowledge that Caroline was an accomplished astronomer, and yet the author seems to be trying to make some point about not over-inflating Caroline’s role. Was she an astronomer or wasn’t she? The issue is the labeling.
If I was making an exhibit, for some reason, on a certain Swiss patent office, then in the employee biography section I’d probably emphasize first and foremost that one employee, Albert Einstein, was the worlds most celebrated physicist, as opposed to say:
“Albert Einstein, a diligent assistant examiner.
Albert was hired full time in 1903, and a couple years later went on to completely shatter everyone’s ideas about the physical world.”
If she was “A fine astronomer in her own right,” then label her as such. The fact that she was raised to be basically a housemaid and her brother took her away from all that is irrelevant to the argument.