Maria Mitchell Facts
Maria Mitchell Facts
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| Interesting Maria Mitchell Facts: |
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| Maria Mitchell was born into a Quaker family in Nantucket, Massachusetts. |
| She was one of ten children and was a first cousin of Benjamin Franklin. |
| Quakers believed that boys and girls should be educated and Maria attended the North Grammar School where he father was the principal. |
| William Mitchell shared his love of astronomy with his daughter and taught her the mathematics of astronomy. |
| In 1835 she opened her own school and made the controversial decision to integrate it. |
| In 1836 she became the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a post she held for twenty years. |
| In 1842 she became a Unitarian. |
| King Frederick VI of Denmark offered a prize to a discoverer of a comet too faint to be seen without a telescope. |
| On October 1, 1847 Mitchell discovered C/1847 T1 and won one of the gold medals. |
| In 1848 she became the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science followed in 1850. |
| In 1865 she became the first professor of astronomy at Vassar College and was named Director of the Vassar College Observatory. |
| She was an ardent suffragette and with Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. |
| While at Vassar College she discovered that she was paid less than her male counterparts and demanded and received a raise. |
| She was an abolitionist and stopped wearing clothing made of cotton in protest against slavery. |
| After her death she was inducted into the U.S. National Women's Hall of Fame and a World War II liberty ship was named for her. |
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