Mary Somerville

Mary Somerville, largely self-taught in mathematics, translated and expanded Laplace's celestial mechanics as The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), then wrote On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), a bestselling synthesis of contemporary science. A review of it by William Whewell helped popularise the word scientist. In 1835 she and Caroline Herschel became the first women elected honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society.