Tag: naming

Re-Opening the Eleanor Ormerod Room

I was very pleased to add another space named for inspirational women in STEM to our collection.

Celebrating the re-opening of the Eleanor Ormerod Training room in the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library was fairly simple since Eleanor’s info board was already in this room,

The LST team have refitted the room and installed  lovely hexagonal tables so I hope it will become a hive of activity.

I took the chance to say a few things about Eleanor, and also Rachel Carson.

The reason we celebrate Eleanor at Edinburgh, is that she was the first woman to be awarded an honorary degree for the university… and hers was one of the very few women’s portraits on display in Old college- although her picture got taken down to make space for a modern inclusive display and never re-instated. Some irony in that, and something I am pleased we can address by re-instating her name now.

She is already honoured by ISG – in 2016 we named our cloud compute service Eleanor because it is a cloud and she was the first woman to be made a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society,

Eleanor Ormerod was born in 1828 – and died in 1901, which means she overlapped slightly with Mary Somerville  after whom we named our data centre, who died in 1872.   They both lived long lives ( MS 90, EO 70) and were recognised in their lifetimes as important scientists.

When we look for women who have done inspirational work in STEM , we should always be curious to ask the question about how they were able to fund this work and their living. They were both from privileged backgrounds Mary was a widow, and Eleanor inherited from her father. Eleanor’s work was not taken seriously by her family until after her father dies in her 30s.

She was the first woman to make a scientific study of insect pests of garden and farm in Britain. She is the author of A manual of Injurious Insects. Some advice in the Manual of Injurious Insects would now be considered dangerous or unlawful. For example, the use of Paris Green, which is highly poisonous and responsible for the destruction of harmless fauna and flora.

She was not a fainthearted lass, had a tendency to try out poisons on herself just to see the effects, her Wikipedia page includes a contemporary account of her taking a bite of a poisonous newt.

We chose World Bee Day to open the room and also to think about poisons, environmentalism and changing attitudes to insecticides and farming  because bees worldwide are under threat from neonicotinoids

It makes me think of Rachel Carson born in 1907 famous for her book ‘Silent Spring’.   her house is near my family in Maryland and I think we can draw a very clear line to link Rachel’s work to Eleanor’s. They both studied insects and crops and the environment. They are both involved in insecticides. Eleanor promoted, even invented pesticides. Rachael protested their use ( particularly DDT) because of the harm they cause to other living things through water sources. They both worked essentially in government jobs – Eleanor unpaid and Rachel not paid much.

The honorary degree of LLD of the University of Edinburgh in March 1900 not long before she died.

‘The pre-eminent position which Miss Ormerod holds in the world of science is the reward of patient study and unwearying observation. Her investigations have been chiefly directed towards the discovery of methods for the prevention of the ravages of those insects which are injurious to orchard, field and forest. Her labours have been crowned with such success that she is entitled to be hailed the protectress of agriculture and the fruits of the earth—a beneficent Demeter of the 19th century.[1][3]

Mary Somerville Data Centre

As part of our activities to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day this year, and to mark the occasion of the completion of a major upgrade project in the James Clerk Maxwell Building  data centre, we are going to name the data centre after Mary Somerville, so it’ll be the MSDC at the JCMB.

I’ve written about Mary before, on this blog  and on Wikipedia. While it is exciting to think of Ada Lovelace as a pioneer, she was not actually a crusader, nor a feminist actor on any political stage. If you are looking for a a female scientist and activist to celebrate, Mary Somerville is your woman. Mary Somerville played a key role in defining and categorizing the physical sciences, was one of the best known scientists of the nineteenth century and a passionate reformer. She was the author of best-selling books on science and a highly respected mathematician and astronomer. She was a very clever woman and was for several years Ada’s tutor and mentor. A staunch supporter of women’s suffrage and a great advocate of women’s education in 1868 Mary was the first person to sign J.S Mill’s petition to Parliament in support of women’s suffrage.  I’m very pleased that we are able to  name our data centre after her.

Mary Somerville (26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872), was a Scottish writer and polymath. She is the person for whom the word scientist was invented. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was admitted as one of the first female members of the Royal Astronomical Society.  She campaigned for votes and education for women.She wrote a number of influential and interdisciplinary science books and when she died in 1872 The Morning Post declared “Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science.”[James Clerk Maxwell himself later commented: “The unity shadowed forth in Mrs Somerville’s book is therefore a unity of the method of science, not a unity of the process of nature”.

She said:

“Mathematics are the natural bent of my mind”

and at aged 90:

“Age has not abated my zeal for the emancipation of my sex from the unreasonable prejudice too prevalent in Great Britain against a literary and scientific education for women”

There’s a very good book called ‘Mary Somerville: Science , Illumination and the  Female Mind‘ by Kathryn Neeley which  describes some of the challenges in categorising Mary because her life and work crossed boundaries and assumed roles. She was a devoted wife and mother as well as eminent scientist. She was sociable with a wide network of connections which included eminent mathematicians and scientists of the day. While formal science education was already closed to women, science itself was not yet so formalised as it is today and many of the discoveries of the day were by ‘amateur’  scientists working privately and sharing their findings socially.

When we write the biographies of women scientist for their wikipedia entries, often we find ourselves telling their story as  ‘translator’, ‘helpmate’, ‘illustrator’, ‘junior partner’ in scientific work of their father, husband or brother. This was not the case for Mary. Neither was she writing for female audiences to engage other women in science or for children or teachers. She had a privileged position in society and was at the heart of her scientific community. Amongst her community of friends were Caroline and William Herschel, Mary and Charles Lyell ( whose notebooks have just been bought by University of Edinburgh), Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and  Annabella Byron.