Mary Somerville was one of the world’s famous female mathematicians born on 26th December 1780 in Jedburgh, United Kingdom. Her story is very inspiring about her struggles for studying, and her courage of never giving up. Mary contributed to mathematics in the field of algebra, integral calculus, and differential math.
Since Mary’s childhood, she had an interest in mathematics and desperately wanted to pursue the same in her future and in those times women weren’t allowed to study for a longer period it was considered unacceptable for women to do so. But Mary never gave up; she used to bring books on algebra and geometry from the library and used to study from them in the nighttime.
Despite so much negativity around her and the opposition from all the people around, she persisted and continued to struggle for studying. While Mary continued to study harder every day later in her life she started to solve algebraic problems in the magazines and she won prizes for her solutions in the magazines.
After this turning point in Mary’s life she started to write several books on different topics in mathematics and science and she also reflected some light on her life saying “all these long courses of years with a lot of struggles which were preserved by me without a single hope. It taught me to never despair”.
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Mary’s approach towards work was very different and it is useful in today’s time like whenever she was unable to solve a difficult problem she would immediately stop working and start to play piano, or sometimes she would start doing some needlework, sometimes she would go outside for a good and long walk. After doing any of these activities with her mind freshening up she was able to find solutions to the problems.
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Mary Somerville was also elected as the Honourable member at the Royal Astronomical Society as she had also studied astronomy and was also a Scottish Scientist.
Mary was no doubt, talented woman, whenever she wasn’t able to understand any passage while reading, she used to read on to several pages and after that, she could often understand when she used to go back to that particular part which was confusing for her. That much focus she was for everything she used to do.
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So, this was a small story about the inspiring female mathematician Mary Somerville. We have a lot of other stories as well so you should check them out. All of those stories are interesting. I hope this article was helpful. Thank you!
