Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/564

546 and, lantern in hand, mount to the roof. On the evening of October 1, 1847, there was a party of invited guests at the Mitchell home. As usual, Maria slipped out, ran up to the telescope, and soon returned and told her father that she thought she saw a comet. Mr. Mitchell hurried upstairs, stationed himself at the telescope, and, as soon as he looked at the object pointed out by his daughter, declared it to be a comet. Miss Mitchell, with her usual caution, advised him to say nothing about it until they had observed it long enough to be tolerably sure. But Mr. Mitchell immediately wrote to Prof. Bond, of Cambridge, announcing the discovery. On account of stormy weather, the mails did not leave Nantucket until October 3d." The comet was seen by Father de Vico at Rome, October 3d, and word of it was immediately sent to Prof. Schumacher at Altoona; by Mr. W. R. Dawes in Kent, England, October 7th; and by Madame Riimker at Hamburg, October 11th. The priority of Miss Mitchell's discovery was generally acknowledged. The King of Denmark had offered a gold medal to the first discoverer of a telescopic comet, but, dying, was succeeded by a king not so much interested in astronomy. Miss Mitchell, moreover, failed in securing priority of registry of the discovery, according to the terms laid down in the king's offer—a thing that was impossible in those days before the Atlantic telegraph. Her claim was taken up and pressed by Edward Everett, and referred by the king to Prof. Schumacher, who reported in favor of granting the medal to her. A few months after this, in 1848, Miss Mitchell was unanimously elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, being the first and only woman ever admitted to that society. She afterward became a member of the American Institute and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Of the meeting of this body in Boston in 1855, she wrote: "It is really amusing to find one's self lionized in a city where one has visited quietly for years. . . . For a few days science reigns supreme—we are fêted and complimented to the top of our heart, and although complimenters and complimented must feel that it is only a sort of theatrical performance for a few days and over, one does enjoy acting the part of greatness for a while!" In 1849 Miss Mitchell, on the invitation of the late Admiral Davis, undertook the computations, for the Nautical Almanac, of the tables of the planet Venus—a work which she carried on, in addition to other duties, for nineteen years. In the same year she was employed by Prof. Bache, of the United States Coast Survey, in the work of an astronomical party at Mount Independence, Maine.

In 1854 she records her "sweeping" of the heavens—a kind of work she really enjoyed, though her back soon became tired before the cold chilled her; in March, seeing two nebulæ in Leo