Elisabeth Hevelius
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann Hevelius (1647 - 1693) also called Elżbieta Heweliusz (in Polish) was the second wife of Johannes Hevelius. Like her husband, she was also an astronomer.
Elisabeth Koopmann (or Kaufmann, German: merchant) was, like Hevelius and his first wife, a member of a rich merchant family in the Hanseatic League city of Danzig.
Her marriage to Hevelius in 1663 allowed her to pursue her own interest in astronomy by helping him manage his observatory in Danzig. Following his death in 1687, she completed and published Prodromus astronomiae (1690), their jointly compiled catalogue of 1,564 stars and their positions.
She is considered the first female astronomer, and called "the mother of moon charts". Her life was recently novelized as The Star Huntress (2006).
[edit] References
- Oglive, M. B. 1986. Women in Science. The MIT Press. ISBN 026215031X
- Walz, E. 2006. The Star Huntress. Random House/Bertelsmann. ISBN 9783442365234
