Mary Somerville (born Fairfax -1780-1872) Scottish scientific writer, born in Jedburgh. After she was widowed in 1807she had the opportunity to study mathematics and astronomy and her second husband whom she married in 1812 encouraged her intellectual pursuits. Her translation of Mecanique Celeste by Pierre Laplace, published as The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831) brought her fame. Supported female education and emancipation and Somerville College, Oxford University, was named for her (1879). Engraving after the drawing of 1848 by James Swinton from the frontispiece of her Physical Geography (London, 1858).