The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel was a prolific writer and recorder of her private and academic life, through diaries, autobiographies for family members, notebooks and observation notes. Yet for reasons unknown she destroyed all of her notebooks and diaries from 1788 to 1797. As a result, we have almost no record of the decade in which she made her most influential mark on science when she discovered eight comets and became the first woman to have a paper read at the Royal Society. Here, for the first time, historian Dr Emily Winterburn looks deep into Caroline’s life and wonders why, in the year following the marriage of her brother and constant companion, Caroline wanted no record of her life to remain. Was she consumed with grief and jealousy? By piecing together – from letters, reminiscences and museum objects – a detailed account of that time, we get to see a new side to history’s ‘most admirable lady astronomer’ and one of the greatest pioneering female scientists of all time.