Pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell is the star of a children’s book using the ancient language she knows: Latin.
Born in Massachusetts Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) is known for discovering a comet in 1847 and working to inspire female astronomers as professor of astronomy at Vassar College, which she joined in 1865. Some 205 years after her birth, Mitchell continues to inspire as the first female astronomer in the US.
His legacy inspired Rachel Beth Cunning, a Latin and English as a second language teacher, to take on the challenge of creating a science book for children — a journey that took Cunning back to her childhood, when -he subscribes to astronomy magazines and reads about the stars. His book in Latin is called Astronomia: Fabula Planetarium (Astronomy: Stories of the Planets; Bombax Press, 2022), and you can buy it on Amazon (opens in new tab).
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“One of the things that I’m generally very interested in — as someone who loves history and loves nerdy science stuff and loves literature and languages — is all the voices that disappear over time,” Cunning told Space.com in an interview earlier in March, which is Women’s History Month.
“A lot of voices get lost,” Cunning continued, “and unfortunately, they tend to be female voices.”
Latin was the language of ancient Rome and, at one time, most of the world was conquered by the imperialist ancients; Latin then continued for centuries as the primary language of the Christian church.
Much of the extant Latin literature today is male, but an important minority of writing is female and receives more scholarly attention. It is thought that women’s voices were lost over time not only because of a lack of literacy or time to write, but also because medieval preservationists rewrote fading ancient manuscripts in what we now call Europe and the Middle East. The East is less inclined to include female voices.
Mitchell is fluent enough read science books in Latin (opens in new tab) in his childhood, which was unusual in the 19th century; today, however, the role of Latin in learning has changed significantly.
Descendants of Latin survive today in languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese (as well as English, as the language began to borrow heavily from French after the Norman Conquest). But Latin is hardly taught in schools or universities anymore. That said, there is a growing “living Latin” movement of YouTubers, novella writers and teachers who use Latin in classes as a spoken language, rather than a grammar puzzle. That’s where the book about Mitchell comes in.
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Tuso paid tribute to the many teachers who came before him and worked to make Latin more adaptable to modern times. He himself found clever translations for “spaceship” and other modern technical terms in Latin, thanks to community research.
The story is meant to encourage young Latino students to continue to pursue their STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) interests, Cunning said, through the example Mitchell himself set in a time when at least women could vote.
“You see this baller girl, who advocates for education and the importance of education, and her role in helping other women have access to education. She’s really cool, and then she’s also done a lot for there are so many different groups,” said Cunning, pointing specifically to Mitchell’s Vassar College days.
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Cunning added that she wants to help expand the available Latin-language literature out there and keep writing novellas from a woman’s perspective, or, at least, to include women’s voices. The rest of him Works in the Latin language (opens in new tab) include the legends of Cupid and Psyche, along with a fictional story of a girl who lives in Pompeii.
These female voices are needed for students, Cunning emphasized. “I want them to feel like they’re part of a long line of history, because they’re part of a long line of women who are wonderful and smart and funny, who have made amazing contributions to science, to the world and to our understanding of That is what I often felt was missing in my own learning, was a sense of continuity.”
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller? (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow him on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) o Facebook (opens in new tab).