Sorry Caroline but you were not the first, Maria was

Today is the birthday of Caroline Herschel, important member of the Herschel astronomical clan and significant astronomer in her own right, who was born 16 March 1750.

Caroline Herschel
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the Internet this anniversary is being acknowledged and celebrated, and quite rightly so, but all of those doing so that I have stumbled across, including such august organisations as the BBC, the Royal Society, NASA and ESA amongst other, have all being perpetuating a history of astronomy myth, namely that Caroline Herschel was the first woman to discover a comet. She wasn’t Maria Kirch was!

Caroline Herschel made her first cometary discovery, having been trained to sweep for comets by her brother William and being provided by him with her own comet sweeping telescope, on 1 August 1786, almost sixty-six years after the death of her fellow German female astronomer and the real first woman to discover a comet, Maria Kirch.

Maria Kirch, who I’ve written about briefly in the past, was the wife and working partner of Gottfried Kirch, who was a pupil of Erhard Weigel and who became the first Prussian state astronomer in Berlin in 1700. Maria and Gottfried had married in 1692. On 21 April 1702 Maria discovered the so-called comet of 1702 (C/1702 H1). You will note this is eighty-four years before Caroline Herschel discovered her first comet. Unfortunately for Maria, the sexist eighteenth century attributed the discovery to her husband Gottfried and not to her. Although Gottfried publically attributed the discovery to Maria in 1710 the official attribution has not been changed to this day.

Maria Kirch

Not only was Maria Kirch robbed of recognition of her discovery in the sexist eighteenth century but people too lazy to check their facts deny her achievement every time they falsely claim that Caroline Herschel was the first woman to discovery a comet.