Jardin des Tuileries

 The majority of my "recording" time goes to my blog, but I try to save at least a bit of time for written journaling as well - mostly it's just when I can steal a rare moment, but today's journaling time was set in place before I left the United States.  Part of my planning for Paris was to spend time relaxing in Le Jardin des Tuileries.  The reason for that is that this is where mathematician Mary Somerville came to relax when she was in Paris in 1817.

The family traveled here because Mary's health was poor - partly from having been working too hard in England.  Here are her own words:

"My health was never good at Chelsea [London], and as I had been working too hard, I became so ill, that change of air and scene were thought absolutely necessary for me. We went accordingly to Paris; partly, because it was near home, as Somerville could not remain long with us at a time, and, partly, because we thought it a good opportunity to give masters to the girls, which we could not afford to do in London. When we arrived, I was so weak, that I always remained in bed writing till one o'clock, and then, either went to sit in the Tuileries gardens, or else received visits"

I can see why she found the Tuileries Gardens relaxing and restorative.  The rest of this post will simply be pictures and a video.  Sadly I have no means of video editing, so it's rough - but hopefully make the place more alive anyway.

I wonder what Mary Somerville might make of it had she known that very nearly 200 years later someone else would come here to reflect and relax simply because she had done so once upon a time.

Lady Ada Augusta Byron Lovelace

Babbage's Difference Engine

Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) was born Augusta Byron, daughter of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabelle Milbanke.  They were married in January of 1815 but separated in January 1816 when Ada (as she was nick-named by her father) was one month old.  Four months later he left the country and never saw her again.  Despite this, and his reputation as a womanizer (one woman with whom he had a publicly well-known affair called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know"), Ada requested to be buried next to her father in the family vault at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, England.

A poet of Byron's stature would normally have been buried in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey, and his remains were sent there, but the Abbey refused to bury him there for the reason of "questionable morality."  (The Abbey finally put in a memorial stone to him in Poet's Corner in 1969; he died in 1824.)  Following are more pictures of Lady Ada and Lord Byron's resting place at Hucknall, which seems happy to have them there.  (Personal note - I had to post a ton of pictures, as this is one of two locations for which I drove a car in England!  This and Newton's home were not really accessible by public transportation, but both were close to Lincoln, England, so I made that my home base and drove here from there.)

 The light you see shining up out of the grave is for a wreath that was given at the time of his death that has been well preserved and proudly displayed. (That light isn't shining all the time; they turned it on for me to show off the wreath!)

There's also an opening that allows for viewing into the vault.

Along with the grave, there are also wall plaques and a stone in the floor.  The stone in the floor was sent by the King of Greece.  Lord Byron had died in Greece - having given money to the Greeks for their war of independence from the Ottoman Turks.  His money went to refit the Greek fleet.  Byron had planned to be part of the attack on the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, but he fell ill and died of his illness.  The Greeks saw him as a hero, and the marble slab in the floor of the church in Hucknall was given by the King of Greece.

Though Ada never knew her father, she was fascinated by him and came to call herself a "poetical scientist."

Portrait of Lord Byron - Charlotte Bronte Bicentennial Celebration - National Portrait Gallery - London

Ada's mother, on the other hand, did everything she could to make sure that Ada did not grow up to be a crazy poet like her father.  Anne Isabelle (Annabella, as she was known) made sure that Ada's instruction was focused on mathematics and science in order to make sure she grew up with a disciplined and balanced mind.  This is in strong contrast to other female mathematicians prior to the twentieth century, all of whom I know had a tremendous struggle to gain mathematical education due to societal or familial concerns that studying mathematics would be too much for a woman's mind to handle and would perhaps drive her mad.

One of these other female mathematicians who had had to struggle in order to study mathematics and whose family feared she would go mad (her father said they would have her in a strait-jacket if she didn't stop studying mathematics) was Mary Fairfax Somerville of whom I posted earlier.  She was 35 years Ada's senior and became one of Ada's math tutors.  Another of Ada's math tutors was Augustus de Morgan, but though he was her tutor, even he felt that mathematics was too much for the mind of a woman in general.  He wrote to her mother that women should avoid doing hard mathematics - "the reason is obvious - the very great tension of mind which mathematics requires is beyond the strength of a woman's physical power of application."  In the same letter he stated, however, that Ada unquestionably had as much power as would require all the strength of a man's constitution.

Mary Somerville and Ada developed a close friendship, as did their families.  Mary mentored Ada, and it was Mary who introduced Ada to Charles Babbage, he who developed ideas for early computing devices - the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine - and is considered by some to be a father of modern computing.  He is described as a pre-eminent polymath among the many polymaths of his day - involved in mathematics, inventing, philosophy and mechanical engineering.

The pictures below and the picture at the very top of this post are of the uncompleted Difference Engine on display at the National Science Museum, London.

Babbage was not the only well-known personage with whom Ada was in contact. Among other acquaintances were Michael Faraday and Charles Dickens. Ada's life was one of privilege, and at one point she nearly became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.

I had opportunity as part of these studies to read the correspondence between the Byron/Lovelace and Somerville/Grieg families, and it was amazing to see this relationship unfold.  Early-on Ada's mother writes to Mary Somerville of her appreciation for the affect she has on balancing Ada's mind.  Later Ada herself writes to Mary and sweetly asks her if she will be her chaperone to go to parties put on by Babbage so that she could interact with him and learn more about his computing machines.  Ada threw herself into understanding the Analytical Engine, and saw, even more than Babbage did, the full extent of what it could do.  She saw that the hardware was only half of the story - and that the computer needed software if it were to be able to calculate any type of equation (Babbage's vision having been mostly about number-crunching and creating tables of logarithms).

Ada Byron Lovelace - from a display in St. Mary Magdalene Church, Hucknall

Display at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Hucknall

From a display about Ada in St. Mary Magdalene Church Hucknall

In her twenties Ada said to her mother that she wanted to compensate for her father's misguided genius, expressing that if he had transmitted any portion of his genius to her that she wanted to use it to bring out great truths and principles.  She is indisputably the world's first published computer programmer.  She saw the possibility of interchanging numbers and symbols, and one example of her vision is that of an engine that might compose elaborate, scientific music.  After her death her works seems to have been forgotten for a while, but when Alan Turing built his machine The Bombe to help break the German Enigma Code during WWII he came across Ada's work, and it is thanks to him that her work has come fully to light.  A new programming language developed in 1986 and used by UK air traffic control is called ADA, which is very fitting since Ada had invented a mechanical bird when she was young; now Ada has finally gotten to fly!

There's so much I wanted to share about Ada that I fear this post is very disjoint!  I think that any commentary about her life needs a book, or maybe an epic poem, rather than a blog post!  But this is the best I can do for now.

Lord Byron's memorial outside St. Mary Magdalene Church, Hucknall, England

Ada died at age 36, the same age at which her father had died - he of fever, she of cancer.  Because of the closeness of their families, Mary Somerville's son Woronzow Grieg wrote to Ada's doctor asking him to send on any news.  I know this from the reading I did of the correspondence in the Bodleian, and when I read the letter from the doctor I was in tears.  The doctor let him know that it was cancer and that there was no hope.  His despair was evident as he ended his letter by saying that while a doctor is necessary in such circumstances, the best a doctor can ever hope for is to RESTORE health, but in this case the best he could hope for was euthanasia - in other words a "good death."

On her father's memorial outside the Hucknall church is a  quote from his work Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, "But there is that within me  .  .  .  that shall breathe when I expire."  I'd certainly say that is true of Ada!

Oxford Readings

Why, yes, yes I do take pictures of absolutely everything.  Why do you ask? :-)

Above is a close- up of the cover of the book I was here to consult.  It is a first edition (1557) Whetstone of Witte by Robert Recorde.  It is the first time the + and - signs are introduced into an English-language text, and it is where the equals sign is invented.  The author explains that he created the sign because he was tired of the "tedioufe repetition" of writing "is equalle to" between sides of every equation.  He chose two parallel lines of the same length "bicaufe noe.2. thynges, can be moare equalle."  It was interesting to see that the length of his equals sign (and his plus sign and his minus sign) was longer than the length of the word "bicaufe."

I took many pictures of the INSIDE of this book too, and it is a delight!  Seriously!  It proved to be an amazing, exciting treasure hunt!  It was definitely English I was reading, but, as you can see above it took some amount of deciphering - and part of that was not just the different spellings of words but also the font that was used in the the printing - and such things as the letter "s" at the end of a word looking as we use it today but looking in the middle of a word like an "f."  It took me quite a long time to figure out that what looked like "bse" was actually the word "use" even though I had context and two-thirds of the word figured out!

Unfortunately, I cannot post pictures of the content, as I have pretty much sworn on my life and the lives of all my offspring for generations to come that the pictures I took of the contents are for my own research and not for print or electronic publication.  I feel OK having given the brief quotes above, as those can be found all over the place on the internet, and they are things I had seen and read previously - and therefore could have written here - prior to having opened this book.

Below is the shelf that kept catching my eye on my left side as I read.  And the picture beneath that is a larger view of the inside of the library.  Some day I'd like to camp out in this library for about 6 months!

Queen's College Library, Oxford

At the Bodleian my reading was different - correspondence rather than a book.  And it just now struck me today that some of the correspondence I read is EXACTLY 300 years after what I read in Queen's, 1557 and 1857.  The challenges of the reading were different.  Here the language is much closer to that of today, but it was hand-written.  The writing is exquisitely neat, but it is done in very small print with a quill pen, and that did prove to be a challenge.

Over the year and a half that I'd been preparing for this trip I came to have a strong interest in the life of Mary Somerville; the correspondence I read in the Bodleian was between Somerville & Grieg families and Byron & Lovelace families.  In other words the family of Mary Somerville (who married Captain Samuel Greig) and the family of Ada Augusta Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron).

I was anticipating reading letters from Mary Somerville, but it seems her papers contain letters to her rather than from her - at least for the most part.  I was able to read about three-fourths of the correspondence, and, while I was initially disappointed at not finding letters written by Mary I became so taken up in the the stories of the lives as I read them that it became a more profound experience than I could have ever imagined it would be!

I'm not above admitting it's kind of fun to feel elite once in a while!

The Mackerras Reading Room in the Bodleian Library

There were two boxes of correspondence of the size you see pictured above and below.  This is a "pencils only" reading room.  All pens and other unnecessary items were stored in a locker downstairs; necessary items could be taken into the reading room in a clear, plastic bag.

Again, I can't show contents, but I can, in my own words, share what impacted me.  First of all I hadn't realized there was such a strong and lengthy connection not only between Mary and Ada but also between their families.  There was a deep and abiding caring for one another that in some instances almost made me weep as I read.

Three things stand out most of all as I reflect on what I read - but I'll share those only briefly now, as I will be doing a post solely on Ada very soon.  The first was a letter from Ada's mom (Lady Byron) to Mary regarding her pleasure at what a good influence Mary was on Ada - her scientific focus helping Ada keep a "balanced mind."  The second was to Mary from a young Ada asking if Mary would be her chaperone to a party Charles Babbage was putting on (actually, there was more than one such letter about more than once such occasion - the age difference between Mary and Ada is 35 years).  The third was a letter to Mary's son, Woronzow Grieg, from Ada's doctor in her final illness.

Mary Fairfax Somerville

Tide Pool in Burntisland

I begin with the picture above rather than a picture of Mary Somerville herself because it was the natural world surrounding her in her home of Burntisland on the eastern coast of Scotland, just north of the Firth of Forth, that was her first inspiration.  According to her biography, which was written by her daughter but largely using her own words from journals and letters:

" .  .  .  as a lonely child, she wandered by the seashore, and on the links of Burntisland, collecting shells and flowers; or spent the clear, cold nights at her window, watching the starlit heavens, whose mysteries she was destined one day to penetrate in all their profound and sublime laws, making clear to others that knowledge which she herself had acquired, at the cost of so hard a struggle."

Burntisland Beach - looking north

Burntisland Beach

Shells on Burntisland Beach

The Links

And here is Mary's house from which she looked through her window at the stars at night:

Childhood Home of Mary Somerville

Setting of Mary's Childhood Home

There is a small yard in back.

Mary Somerville's Childhood Home

As you can see in the plaque above the door, Mary's father was a naval officer.  He was away at sea when she was born, so Mary was born in Jedburgh, at the home of an aunt and uncle, rather than here in Burntisland.  Later her father became a vice-admiral.

The plaque says that she was a well-known mathematician and astronomer, and she certainly was in her day.  One of the things that she did was to translate Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace's work Méchanique céleste. He later told her that of all women only she and Caroline Herschel understood his work.  She received a letter from renowned Cambridge mathematician George Peacock that he and Dr. William Whewell had chosen her translation to be used

"Dr. Whewell and myself have already taken steps to introduce it into the course of our studies at Cambridge, and I have little doubt that it will immediately become an essential work to those of our students who aspire to the highest places in our examinations  .  .  ."

She wrote other books as well.  She was particularly interested in analysis and wrote a book on curves and surfaces of the second and higher orders and also wrote a book titled, Physical Sciences.  She had the honor of presenting her Physical Sciences to the Duchess of Kent, who was the mother of Queen Victoria, of this she writes:

"I had the honour of presenting a copy of my book to the Duchess of Kent at a private audience. The Duchess and Princess Victoria were alone, and received me very graciously, and conversed for half an hour with me. As I mentioned before, I saw the young Princess crowned: youthful, almost child-like as she was, she went through the imposing ceremony with all the dignity of a Queen."

So Mary Somerville certainly reached to the heights, but the beginnings were not so easy for her.  So let's go back to the beginning  .  .  .

Her birthplace was the Jedburgh Manse, home of her uncle The Reverend Dr. Thomas Somerville (1741-1830), whose grave in the south choir chapel of the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey is shown below.

Ruins of Jedburgh Abbey

Looking toward the great west entrance of Jedburgh Abbey

While preparing for these travels I spent a great deal of time reading about Mary Somerville's life and work.  She came from a well-respected though not wealthy or noble family.  Her father's family, the Fairfaxes, were distinguished, and her mother was related to several prominent Scottish families.  When I read she'd been born in the Manse of Jedburgh, I took that to be a manor house or mansion.  I knew the manse to have been entirely ruined, but I hoped to find something marking the spot on my travels.  I asked about it at the visitor information building in Jedburgh, but no one there knew. And then I came across the following:

This was an exciting moment for me!  Looking it up later I found that a manse is the home of a Presbyterian minister.  The manse would have been on the grassy area in the picture below - right by the ruins.  It would probably have extended into the foreground as well.  The remaining houses in this area were demolished in 1974 in order for archaeological studies of the ruins to take place.

Location of the Manse of Jedburgh

Here is what Mary has to say of the Manse, and of time spent in Jedburgh with her relatives:

"My uncle's house—the manse—in which I was born, stands in a pretty garden, bounded by the fine ancient abbey, which, though partially ruined, still serves as the parish kirk. The garden produced abundance of common flowers, vegetables, and fruit. Some of the plum and pear trees were very old, and were said to have been planted by the monks  .  .  .  . An inland scene was new to me, and I was never tired of admiring the tree-crowned scaurs or precipices, where the rich glow of the red sandstone harmonized so well with the autumnal tints of the foliage.  We often bathed in the pure stream of the Jed. My aunt always went with us, and was the merriest of the party; we bathed in a pool which was deep under the high scaur, but sloped gradually from the grassy bank on the other side.  .  .  . The evenings were cheerful; my aunt sang Scotch songs prettily, and told us stories and legends about Jedburgh, which had been a royal residence in the olden time. She had a tame white and tawny-coloured owl, which we fed every night, and sometimes brought into the drawing-room  .  .  .  . I was always glad to return to the manse."

Here is the Jed or "Jed Water" of which she speaks.  It is directly below the abbey.

Jed Water, Jedburgh

Jed Water, Jedburgh

There is just so much to say about her life and her work, and this has gotten so long already.  I'll close with some words of what I find most interesting about her, but I need to direct you to her biography for more (biography, autobiography).

So far nothing has been said of her struggle, and it was a struggle for ANY woman born in 1780 who wanted to study mathematics.  Her initial interest in the sciences came from her own observations of the natural world - the beach near her home and the stars outside her window.  Later, while at a friend's house, she was shown a women's fashion magazine with color plates in it; also in it she found a math puzzle that had x's and y's in it.  When she asked what those were, her friend, Miss Ogilvie, said, "Oh, it is a kind of arithmetic: they call it Algebra; but I can tell you nothing about it."  Mary remembers going home and looking through all the books to see if they could tell her what was meant by Algebra.

Another draw to mathematics came when she was taking art lessons from the well-known Scottish painter Alexander Nasmyth.  Nasmyth was primarily a landscape painter, but he is probably best known for his portrait of his friend, and national Scottish hero, the poet Robert Burns.

Nasmyth's Portrait of Robert Burns, National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

The inspiration she received from Nasmyth happened in the form of an overheard conversation - again, in her own words:

"One day I happened to be near him while he was talking to the Ladies Douglas about perspective. He said, "You should study Euclid's Elements of Geometry; the foundation not only of perspective, but of astronomy and all mechanical science." Here, in the most unexpected manner, I got the information I wanted, for I at once saw that it would help me to understand some parts of Robertson's "Navigation;" but as to going to a bookseller and asking for Euclid the
[Pg 49] thing was impossible! Besides I did not yet know anything definite about Algebra, so no more could be done at that time; but I never lost sight of an object which had interested me from the first."

By impossible she meant that a woman could not go to a bookseller and purchase mathematics books for herself.  She did study what she could at home - asking questions of her brother's tutor and picking up what she could from him.  Her parents discouraged her, and she had enough household chores to keep her busy until night-time, so she took to studying in her room by candle-light.  When her mother heard of this she instructed the servants to take Mary's candles way.  Mary continued to find ways to study, which concerned her father so much that he exclaimed to her mother, "Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait jacket one of these days. There was X., who went raving mad about the longitude!"

Mary had to fight against familial and cultural stereotypes against women studying mathematics.  Women were expected to be "accomplished" - able to stitch and sketch, play pianoforte and perhaps speak another modern language - but studying mathematics was thought to be so mentally strenuous for a woman that she could go crazy.  When she married, her husband also did not encourage her studies, but her first husband died a couple of years after their marriage.  After his death, her inheritance gave her more freedom to pursue her studies.  She later married her first cousin, Dr. William Somerville (son of the uncle at whose home she'd been born), and he encouraged her in her studies.  By this time she was 32 years old.  She accomplished much after this, but one wonders to what heights she would have risen had she been allowed to study from an early age.

She remained mentally active until her death in 1872 at nearly 92 years of age - having commented at age 89 that she was still well able to do the Calculus.

So, finally a portrait of this mathematician - and I should add that her family expressed later that they wished a portrait would have been made of her when she was even younger.  Apparently she was a great beauty, and during her young-adulthood and attending social functions of the day in Edinburgh she was known as "The Rose of Jedburgh."

Portrait of Mary Fairfax Somerville (National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh)

This portrait is part of a special collection at the National Portrait Gallery regarding the accomplishments of women in the late 18th and early 20th century.  Note the last sentence of the plaque below about the year in which women were finally granted the right to study for degrees at university.

As you can see, I found myself in quite august company!  Queen Victoria is on the far right.

PERSONAL ASPECTS:

The above was posted on my "math only" blog.  Now for some personal comments about my journey in her footsteps.

This took a number of days to put together, as I needed to visit places in Edinburgh and places outside of Edinburgh - Jedburgh, which is in the borderlands to the south, and Burntisland, which is across the Firth of Forth to the north.

As I mentioned above, it was very exciting for me to have found the manse!  Good thing I read all the signs on the abbey tour!  The other "find" was her portrait.  I was in the National Portrait Gallery to find the portrait her teacher, Nasmyth, did of Robert Burns.  Then I turned a corner, and there she was in all her glory!  This trip is involving a lot of sleuthing and a lot of serendipity!

Today was my trip to the last of these stops, Burntisland.  It was a particularly wonderful day because I had a destination at which I was really only after two things, the beach she explored as a child and her childhood home.  I had about 4 hours here and was able to spend a very long time sitting at the beach, listening to the waves lapping the shore and the gulls crying above.  It's by far the most relaxed day I've had since beginning my travels.  While walking across "The Links" the wide expanse of park between the city and the sea, I was suddenly hit with the salty tang of the ocean, which, to this California girl, just felt somehow like coming home again.

Journaling on Burntisland Beach

The day was a bit chilly - not bad, 11C, which is what, 50F?  But then the sun came out and began to warm my back.  You can tell by the shadow over my writing:

Everyone else at the beach was all bundled up and wearing shoes.  I'm a California girl!  I can't walk on the beach with shoes on!  People probably thought I was crazy, but it sure felt good to feel the sand between my toes!

I was surprised to see how well you can see Edinburgh across the firth from Burntisland. I've been looking at maps for the last year and a half, but it just isn't nearly the same as being here!  I think this gives more perspective to my hike the other day to Arthur's Seat - highest point you can see!

Another thing I'd been looking forward to seeing is the Forth Railbridge, which you can see as the serpentine structure (if you look closely) here.  I haven't been able to get in a good spot to get a decent picture, but this is the bridge I crossed today by train.  It is an engineering marvel that was build in 1890.

One thing I neglected in the math-only post was Mary's church - oldest church in Burntisland (begun in 1592) - the Burntisland Parish Church.

One last picture - a bit of the beauty of Burntisland.