In Maria Popova's strange and lovely new book, “Figuring,” we learn about the precocious Maria Mitchell. In 1831, at the age of 12, she was peering through a telescope to count out the seconds of an eclipse. Night after night, as Popova tells it, the young girl “would point her steadfast instrument at the nocturne and sweep the skies with quiet systematic passion, searching for a new celestial object against the backdrop of familiar bodies.”
Sixteen years later Mitchell became the first person to sight a new comet passing through our solar system. She went on to become America's first professional woman astronomer, the first woman to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, along with other firsts, a figure of immense power and genuine modesty.
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