Women Eclipse Chasers

We welcome contributions from our readers! This week’s guest post was written by Thomas Hockey, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Northern Iowa. He lives on the path of the 1869 total eclipse of the Sun. His post is especially timely as we in the United States prepare for the annual eclipse on October 14, 2023 and the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.

Sometimes science and politics overlap in serendipitous ways. One just has to look for them.

The trans-continental 7 August 1869 total eclipse of the Sun was the first for which scientific observation was expected to have a spectroscopic component. It also was the inaugural in the United States at which a significant number of women participated in its study. 

The United States Nautical Almanac Expedition to the path of totality included Professor John Van Vleck (1833-1912; Wesleyan University), who was stationed in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He was assigned spectroscopic observation, even though he was a neophyte to what eventually would be called an astrophysical technique.

The three minutes of totality simply did not allow for an inexperienced spectroscopist to observe and record what he had seen. Van Vleck needed help and found it close by--down the street from his hotel, where an attorney just starting out had hung a new shingle.

Mansfield (~1870), Credit: Wikipedia

Arabella Mansfield (1846-1911; née Belle Aurelia Babb) volunteered to take notes for Van Vleck. Doing so, she gave up time that otherwise might have been spent viewing the celestial spectacle itself, the first over Iowa in recorded history and the last in a lifetime.

But Mansfield was not new to ‘firsts’. She was the very first female lawyer licensed in the entire country.

Less than 50 kilometers away, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889; Vassar College), the pioneer professional female astronomer in the United States, observed the August 1869 total solar eclipse, too. She did so along with a group of her students and young alumni, the first scientific expedition populated exclusively by women. Here is where the coincidence appears.

The famous professor from New York and the attorney from Iowa do not seem to have met surrounding the event that was the total eclipse. However, both the National Woman Suffrage Association and the Association for the Advancement of Woman began organizing in 1869, and membership lists overlapped. Mansfield would become a member of the former’s executive committee, while the presidency of the latter would be held by Mitchell. In these roles they crossed paths. 

We are reminded that even astronomy looking up—considered esoteric by many—does not take place in a vacuum of progress below.

Find more eclipse history and stories at:

• A Woman in Eclipse: Maria Mitchell and the Great Solar Expedition of 1878 by David Baron
• Getting Intimate with the Sun and the Moon by Angela Speck
• Since the late 19th century, adventurous female ‘eclipse chasers’ have contributed to science in Australia by Toner Stevenson
• Countdown Begins for the Great North American Solar Eclipse! by the AAS Press Officers

Wishing you clear skies for the eclipses!