woman member. The Association for the Advancement of Science did the same in 1850. In 1849 she was offered a job by the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office as a computer (one who does computations) of tables of positions of the planet Venus. She also started traveling to attend scientific meetings. By paying her dues in this way, she learned what real commitment was during a time when men were very limited in their views of women and their place in a culture. The “gender roles were completely separated and Maria overcame all of these obstacles” (Weatherford p.67) by her determination and fight. By working the library and the data base, she ready access to information that she could get to accomplish her own studies and further her won advancement of career.In 1856 she received an offer from a rich man named General Swift to accompany his daughter Prudence on a trip to the South and to Europe. Maria accepted and took her almanac work with her. They went south to New Orleans, then to London, where Maria visited the Greenwich Observatory. Prudence returned to the States, but Maria remained in Europe. She went to France on her own, then continued on to Rome with Nathaniel Hawthorne's family. She had hoped to visit the Vatican Observatory, but she was told that women were not admitted. She tried to get special permission and finally succeeded, but was allowed to go in only in the daytime. She was not able to “look at the stars through the telescope at night.” (Mitchell p.55) After her return home, she was presented with a new telescope bought with money collected by women for the first woman astronomer of the United States. She used it to study sunspots and other astronomical events. In 1865 she became professor of astronomy and director of the college observatory at the newly-opened Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York where she had the use of a twelve-inch telescope, the third largest in the United States. She often in...
