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THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE ESSAY "ON JUPITER AND ITS SATELLITES" BY THE FIRST FEMALE ASTRONOMER IN THE U.S.A. - Octavo, 8-1/2 inches high by 5-3/8 inches wide. The contemporary brown calf and marbled boards are detached but present and the spine has perished and is thus lacking. The text block is intact and tight. [978] pages in all with the pagination as follows: Volume I: pages [i]-viii & 1-484; and Volume II: pages [i]-viii & 1-480. Pages 327/328 are skipped in numbering as published, which collates with the copy at the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The volume is illustrated with 3 plates, including one folding, as well as several textual illustrations. Although the title page to the second volume indicates the presence of a map intended to illustrate E.W. Hilgard's article "On the Geological History of the Gulf of Mexico" (page 391), the map is not here present, if it ever was included. The endpapers are foxed and there is some light soiling to the title page of the first volume. The edges of the first few leaves are lightly darkened with a tiny spot of dampstaining to the top edge of those leaves. A very good tight copy which would be well worth rebinding. Most noteworthy is the first publication of Maria Mitchell's essay "On Jupiter and its Satellites", illustrated with a plate (volume I, pages 393-395).The first American scientist to discover a comet, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was the first female astronomer in the United States. Working as the librarian of the Nantuckett Atheneum, Maria Mitchell read through the day and spent her nights with her father at the observatory he built atop the Pacific Bank. Her discovery in 1847 of the comet which came to be named "Miss Mitchell's Comet" brought her international acclaim. She was awarded a gold medal by King Frederick of Denmark and elected as the first woman to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the following year. Mitchell traveled throughout Europe after leaving the Atheneum in 1856, meeting with astronomers the world over. She became involved and active in the anti-slavery movement and the suffrage movement and was subsequently instrumental in the formation of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. After the Civil War, Mitchell was recruited to join the faculty at Vassar College where, with a 12 inch telescope (then the third largest in the US), she specialized in studying the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. She made waves by encouraging her female students to come out at night for classes and celestial observations and brought in noted feminists, including Julia Ward Howe, to speak on political issues. Continuously championing the advancement of women, she gave an important speech entitled "The Need for Women in Science" during the 1876 centennial. Mitchell was one of only 3 women to be elected to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans in 1905. She was also inducted into the National Woman's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. A lunar crater on the moon was named in her honor.Also worth noting is Professor L. Respighi's essay "On the Solar Protuberances", illustrated with a folding plate (volume I, pages 283-287).The Italian astronomer Lorenzo Respighi (1824-1889) was appointed appointed professor of mechanics and hydraulics at the University of Bologna. In that context, his first works were mathematical and included a well-known memoir on the principles of differential calculus. Captivated by astronomy, he succeeded Calandrelli as director of the astronomical observatory at the University of Bologna in 1855. After making observations on comets, Respighi became director of the Campidoglio observatory in Rome where he devoted his attention to studying solar phenomena. His studies of the spectra of sunspots were particularly important as he observed the splitting of the absorption lines, later described by Hale as the result of the Zeeman effect.Henry James Clark's essay "The American Spongilla, a Craspedote, Flag.
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