Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath (1780-1872). Autograph letter signed. No place. Small 8vo. 1 page on bifolium. With autogr. envelope.
$ 6,964 / 6.500 €
(87349/BN57838)
To Ada, Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, declining an invitation: "I have an engagement on the 22d otherwise I should have had much pleasure in dining with you that day". - Although self-taught, Mary Somerville had by the mid-1820s established herself as a significant figure in London scientific circles. In 1831 she published "The Mechanism of the Heavens", a condensation of Laplace's "Mécanique céleste", and the first in what was to be an immensely successful and influential series of scientific text-books which were to make her arguably the most widely recognised woman of science before Marie Curie.
Somerville was not only a friend but an early intellectual influence on Ada Lovelace, and it was most likely she who introduced the then Ada Byron to Charles Babbage in 1833, when she was seventeen. - Traces of folding and left margin with punched holes (not touching text), otherwise in fine condition..