Oddlet: Caroline Herschel · 1 min read
Jun 27, 2026
Minding the Heavens
What does it take for an 18th-century woman, raised in a kitchen, to become the first person ever paid by the British Crown for science?
Caroline Herschel was four foot three, pock-marked from smallpox, one bad eye from typhus, and German. Her mother kept her in the kitchen until she was twenty-two. Her father had told her she would never marry. Then her brother William discovered Uranus, and needed a hand.
She gave him both. She ground his mirrors. She catalogued 2,500 nebulae, which became the foundation of the New General Catalogue. When William's sixteen-hour polishing sessions threatened to kill him, she fed him by hand, "by putting the victuals by bits into his mouth."
On the night of 31 December 1783, William called for help. Caroline ran. There was a foot of melting snow, and the path was crossed by butcher's hooks holding the telescope rigging. She ran straight onto one. It went through her thigh. Nearly two ounces of her came away on it. There is no good way to write the next sentence. She dressed the wound herself. Dr. Lind said a soldier would have been hospitalised six weeks. Her diary records mainly relief that the sky had clouded over, "so my brother was no loser through the accident."
By 1797 she had swept eight comets out of the dark. George III paid her fifty pounds a year, the first money any woman had earned from the British Crown for science.
In her autobiography, honoured by two kings and the Royal Astronomical Society, she wrote that a well-trained puppy-dog would have done as much.
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- Britannica – Caroline Lucretia Herschel — Confirms birth/death dates and Hanover locations, height 4 ft 3 in, typhus at 10, 1772 move to Bath, last performance 1782, three nebulae detected 1783, first woman to discover a comet 1786, eight comets total, £50 pension 1787, Gold Medal 1828.
- Wikipedia – Caroline Herschel — Detailed dates for the 8 comets, parents' names and dates, 15 August 1772 departure, April 1778 Messiah performance, 1798 Flamsteed index work, 1802 nebulae catalogue, Royal Irish Academy 1838, Prussian Gold Medal 1846, asteroid 281 Lucretia, burial location, direct quotes.
- MacTutor History of Mathematics – Caroline Herschel — Confirms mother's opposition to her education and household-servant role, her singing as 'first treble' in Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus, her destroyed diary about William's 1788 marriage to Mary Pitt, full list of awards.
- Royal Museums Greenwich – Caroline Herschel: the first paid female astronomer — Details the 1787 £50 salary as 'William's assistant,' her grinding/polishing of mirrors and calculation work.
- Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel by Mrs. John Herschel (1876)
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