The word itself was created by William Whewell, reviewing The Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mary Somerville. The term used at the time, ‘a man of science’, didn’t apply to Mrs ...

He is proud of his wife; a pardonable weakness in any man, especially so in the husband of Mary Somerville. He began at once to talk of her. “ Mrs. Somerville,” he said, “ was much ...

One of the teachers profiled is Mary Somerville ... who is often called the first computer programmer. William Somerville also helped his wife by borrowing books for her from the then men-only ...

and Ruth Boreham, former project curator at the National Library of Scotland, who is writing a biography of Mary Somerville.

During my visit I also met the science historian Allan Chapman, author of the 2004 biography Mary Somerville: And the World of Science. He said Mary would be “tickled pink” to have her portrait on the ...