Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel was a German-born British astronomer who made significant contributions to the field of astronomy. She was the younger sister of William Herschel, a famous astronomer and musician, who invited her to join him in England as his assistant. Caroline Herschel learned astronomy from her brother and became an expert observer and calculator. She discovered eight comets between 1786 and 1797, one of which was later named 35P,Herschel-Rigollet after her. She also detected three nebulae in 1783 and helped her brother catalog thousands of stars and nebulae. She was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist from King George III and the first woman to publish scientific papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. She was awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828 and became an honorary member of the society in 1835. She also received a Gold Medal for Science from the King of Prussia in 1846. She lived to be 97 years old and continued to work on astronomy until late in life. She is regarded as one of the pioneers of women in science and a role model for future generations of female astronomers.¹