Maria margarethe kirch biography templates

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The data collected by the Kirches was used to produce calendars and almanacs and was also very useful in navigation. Father

Occupation: Cleric

Her father was a Protestant minister. Education

Schooling: No University

She is thought to have become interested in astromony through Christoph Arnold of Sommerfeld, the so-called 'astronomical peasant', a self-taught astronomer who so impressed the council of Leipzig that they granted him a sum of money and lifelong freedom from taxes.

1716, when he son, Christoph, became astronomer of the Berlin Academy, she joined him there and continued to calculate calendars until her death. It is likely, though, that Maria could not have made a claim in her own name because she published solely in German while the preferred language in the German scientific circles of the time was Latin, a fact which prevented her publishing her works in Germany's only scientific journal of the period, Acta Eruditorum.

Here was a girl learning from one of the finest astronomical minds of the age, preparing for a career that society insisted she could never have.

Through Arnold, Maria met Gottfried Kirch in 1692 – a mathematician and astronomer thirty years her senior who had studied under the legendary Johannes Hevelius.

Religion

Affiliation: Lutheran (Lutheran)

6.
This systematic, decades-long commitment to data collection demonstrates Maria’s understanding of the importance of long-term scientific observation – a contribution that modern climate researchers still rely upon.
The Academy’s Rejection: Institutional Sexism Laid Bare
When Gottfried died in 1710, Maria faced an immediate financial crisis.

Some nights before I had observed a variable star, and my wife wanted to find and see it for herself. While at the time women were not allowed to attend universities, much work was conducted outside universities and Gottfried himself had never attended a university.

Maria and Gottfried worked together as a team, though Maria was mainly seen as Gottfried's assistant rather than equal.

That contribution deserves recognition, respect, and the justice that was denied to her in life.

In celebrating Maria Margaretha Kirch, we don’t merely honour one overlooked astronomer. They refused her request outright, explicitly stating that women could not hold official positions. Nationality

Birth: Panitsch, near Leipzig, Germany

Career: various cities in Germany; see the entry for Kirch, Gottfried.

In so doing she found a comet in the sky.

No information on financial status.

Peter the Great evidently wanted her to come to Russia, but she joined her son in Berlin instead. This wasn’t accidental; Maria deliberately trained them in astronomical observation and calculation from childhood.

Christine Kirch continued the family’s work for decades after her mother’s death, maintaining weather observations until 1774 and continuing calendar production.

Whilst Herschel’s achievements deserve celebration, the continued erasure of Maria’s priority represents ongoing historical negligence.

This isn’t merely academic pedantry. Technically, this makes her a co-discoverer rather than the sole discoverer. Hoffmann soon fell behind with his work and failed to make required observations and it was even suggested that Maria become his assistant.

She worked in his observatory and trained her son and daughters to act as her assistants and continued the family's astronomical work of producting calendars and almanacs as well as making observations. Award: Gold medal of Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin (1709).

Source: Wikipedia

Maria Winkelmann Kirch (1670 -1720)

A German astronomer, Maria was taught by her father and uncle, who believed that she deserved the equivalent education bestowed upon boys.