Elisabeth Hevelius

Polish astronomer

• Born: January 17, 1647; Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland
• Died: December 22, 1693; Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland

One of the first modern female astronomers, Elisabeth Hevelius capped a lifetime of celestial observations with the publication of her and her late husband’s work in 1690, consisting of a comprehensive star catalogue and star atlas.

Also known as: Catharina Elisabetha Koopman, Elzbieta Heweliusz (in Polish)

Primary field: Astronomy

Specialty: Observational astronomy

Early Life

Catharina Elisabetha Koopman Hevelius was born in Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland, on January 17, 1647. Her parents, Nicholas Kooperman and Joanna Mennings Kooperman, were Dutch Lutherans who had emigrated from their native Amsterdam to Danzig, where they had become a rich, landholding merchant family.

Hevelius was well educated; she studied languages, including Latin, as well as the natural sciences. As a girl, she was fascinated by the stars. Once, she approached Danzig’s foremost astronomer, the wealthy brewer and merchant Johannes Hevelius. By 1650, Johannes had built the largest observatory of Europe on top of three connected houses of his. Hevelius obtained his promise that he would show her the splendor of the starry sky when she was older.

On March 10, 1662, Johannes’s first wife, Katharina Rebeschke, died. There were no children from their marriage. Soon after, Hevelius reminded him about his promise. By this time, she had a reputation as a beautiful and intelligent young woman from a rich family. Despite their age difference of thirty-six years—Hevelius was fifteen, and Johannes was fifty-one—the two fell in love, based in part on their mutual interest in astronomy. On February 3, 1663, the couple married in Danzig.

Life’s Work

Impressed by her husband’s large, well-equipped observatory, Hevelius quickly familiarized herself with the instruments at her disposal and began making astronomical observations. Johannes owned a remarkable array of telescopes. However, he insisted on naked-eye observation for all of his serious astronomical observations. For this, he relied on sextants, quadrants, and a large octant. These were large, elaborate instruments named for the amount of a circle they encompassed; a sextant covered 60 degrees, or one sixth of 360 degrees, for example.

Operating the large sextants and the octant required the work of at least two people. The instruments were equipped with an alidade (a type of ruler) to fix on a distant object, the position of which could then be read on the sextant or octant. Johannes had invented his own, accurate alidade that employed a cylinder to fix celestial objects in its sight.

While waiting for a new assistant to arrive, Johannes asked his wife to aid him in his observations. Hevelius excelled at and enjoyed this task. From 1664 on, she became her husband’s partner in observation. Together, the Heveliuses were able to determine the position of stars with the naked eye, with a general accuracy of no more than a one-minute arc deviation. This type of accuracy had not been accomplished before. When Johannes’s assistant, Andreas Markwardt, left after two years of service, Hevelius permanently took up the position of her husband’s co-observer. The printer of her husband’s press helped with the heavy physical work required to reposition the largest instruments.

While gazing at the stars and determining their positions with her husband, Hevelius also gave birth to four children. In 1664, her son John Adeodatus was born; he died one year later. In 1666, daughter Catherine Elisabeth was born. She was followed by Julia Renata in 1668 and Flora Constance in 1672. All three sisters survived childhood, though none became interested in science.

Johannes published the result of his and his wife’s observations in his Cometographia (Cometography, 1668), which lists known comets and describes sunspot observations. In 1673, Johannes published Machina coelestis pars prior (Astronomical instruments, first part). On two copper plates in the manuscript, Hevelius is depicted observing the sky with her husband, operating the big sextant and the octant. This came as close to scientific credit for her contributions as was possible at the time.

King Jan III Sobieski visited the Heveliuses’ observatory on November 27, 1677, and was so impressed that he gave the Heveliuses a stipend. However, for all their popularity, the Heveliuses found themselves at the heart of a controversy between classic, naked-eye astronomy and the new age of telescopic observations in 1679. In London, England, where Johannes was the first foreign member of the Royal Society, astronomer Robert Hooke accused Hevelius of inaccurate celestial measurements. He sent fellow astronomer Edmond Halley to Danzig to check on Hevelius’s work. There, from May 26 to July 18, 1679, Halley was impressed by the accuracy of the naked-eye observations made by Johannes and Elisabeth Hevelius.

In the summer of 1679, Machina coelestis pars posterior (Astronomical instruments, second part) was published. The text included a biography of Johannes, a detailed description of his instruments, and a star catalog of 1,564 stars. The catalogue was based in part on his and Hevelius’s own observations.

On September 26, 1679, a fire destroyed the Heveliuses’ home. The fire also destroyed their observatory and astronomical instruments, their library, and their printing press. All but several valuable books from the library, the Heveliuses’ star catalogue, and the fifty to ninety copies of the second Machina coelestis—which had been sent out already—were lost.

Jan III Sobieski and French king Louis XIV sent some thousand talers to help the Heveliuses rebuild, but the overall damage was estimated at over thirty thousand talers. Nevertheless, the Heveliuses rebuilt their observatory and continued to work on their star catalog. They incorporated into the catalog the positions of 341 southern stars recorded by their friend Halley in 1679. Hevelius was responsible for much of the catalogue’s mathematical calculations and editing the Latin text.

In 1685, Johannes published Annus climacterius (Climacteric year), which describes the 1679 fire and further observations by himself and his wife. The couple then began preparing their final publication.

Johannes died on January 28, 1687, his seventy-sixth birthday. His wife completed their final publication, the Prodromus astronomiae (Collected astronomy, 1690), and saw it through to publication. The work, which consists of three parts, compiles two decades of star observations and stellar positions recorded by the Heveliuses. The three parts of the Prodromus astronomiae are a preface, a catalog of 1,888 stars, and a star atlas containing fifty-four maps of the constellations and one map each for the stars of the northern and southern hemispheres. The section on constellations includes eleven groupings named by the Heveliuses, seven of which have remained in use: Canes Venatici, Lacerta, Leo Minor, Lynx, Scutum, Sextans, and Vulpecula. For the frontispiece of the star atlas, Hevelius signed the dedication to the Polish king as Elisabeth, widow of Hevelius.

Hevelius died on December 22, 1693, at the age of forty-six.

Impact

Hevelius is considered one of the first modern female observational astronomers. She benefitted from working at the best-equipped and largest observatory of the time, and her contributions to the work of Johannes Hevelius were considerable. She was valued and credited by him as an accurate observer, keen manipulator of astronomical instruments—some weighing over one thousand pounds—and as mathematical calculator and Latin editor. She corresponded with other European astronomers, and in so doing struck up a friendship with Halley, a prominent astronomer at the time.

Hevelius’s final achievement was to publish the capstone work planned by herself and her husband: Prodromus astronomiae. The publication of their stellar observations, star catalogue, and star map preserved a lifetime of work compiled by the two astronomers.

In recognition of Hevelius’s contributions to astronomy, a minor planet, discovered on October 17, 1960, at the Palomar Observatory in California, is named 12625 Koopman. In addition, a crater on the planet Venus is named Corpman, a variant spelling of Hevelius’s maiden name.

Bibliography

Alic, Margaret. Hypatia’s Heritage. Boston: Beacon, 1986. Print. Chapter 9, “The Women Astronomers,” places Hevelius’s work in the context of that by female astronomers before and after her time.

Kanas, Nick. Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography. 2nd ed. New York: Springer, 2012. Print. Hevelius’s contribution to the work of her husband is described in the chapter on Johannes Hevelius and his work. Discusses the quality and drawbacks of the star atlas published by Hevelius in 1690 and describes the work of those who copied the atlas later on.

North, John David. Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology. Rev. ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Print. Includes the work of Elisabeth and Johannes Hevelius, with a reproduction of the illustration that portrays both of them operating a large sextant apparatus.