## Metadata - Author: [[London Review of Books]] - Full Title: David Morley: From ‘Seven Women Scientists’ - Category: #articles - Summary: Caroline Herschel discovered her first comet and was honored by having it named after her. Ada Lovelace wrote detailed notes on a computing engine, comparing its functions to musical patterns. Both women made significant contributions to science and mathematics. - URL: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n21/david-morley/from-seven-women-scientists ## Full Document  ###### Caroline Herschel ‘Index to Flamsteed’s Observations of the Fixed Stars’, 1798 Caroline Herschel turns her telescope on her first comet, its swan’s neck of snow dipping into the dark water of space. The curved tine of its tail trailing, flickering signalling for a likeness of light among the nebulae and unbroken night where two swans of ice and stone might sweep the perihelion in parallel parabolas of double stars and orbiting pairs. Caroline steadies her focus. The polished lens of her Newtonian reflector light-gathers the flight of every star. The swans have flown, brother and sister. They named the first comet after her. ###### Ada Lovelace ‘Notes A-G on the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage’, 1843 A. She walks through mathematics like light. ‘We will terminate these Notes,’ Lovelace writes, B. ‘by following up in detail the steps through which the engine could compute C. the Numbers of Bernoulli.’ Ada Lovelace tracks them through the tables of figures, D. her algorithm moving through its metres precisely as a pianist playing keys. E. ‘The engine,’ she says to Babbage, ‘weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard F. loom weaves flowers and leaves.’ The Enchantress of Number, her friend calls her. G. And all that’s best of dark and bright met in the aspect of her mind.