Isis Pogson


Isis Pogson was a British astronomer and meteorologist, who was one of the first women to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Biography

Early life

Pogson was born in Oxford, England, the eldest daughter of Norman Pogson by his first marriage to Elizabeth Jane Ambrose.
She was likely named after the River Isis, the part of the River Thames that flows through Oxford.

Assisting astronomer

Norman Pogson was an assistant at Radcliffe Observatory and then at Hartwell Observatory. He discovered the asteroid 42 Isis on 23 May 1856, for which he was awarded the Lalande Prize. The asteroid was named by Professor Manuel John Johnson, director of the Radcliffe Observatory, presumably in honour of Pogson's daughter Isis; it could also have been a reference to the River Isis.
When her father became director of the Madras Observatory in Madras, India, in October 1860, he travelled to his new post with his first wife and three of his 11 children, including Isis. His wife died in 1869, and he relied upon Isis to look after his other children. She also worked in India as her father's assistant. She was given the post of computer at the observatory in 1873 with the salary of 150 rupees, equivalent to a "cook or coach-man", and worked there for 25 years until she retired with a pension of 250 rupees in 1898, when the observatory closed. She served as the meteorological superintendent and reporter for the Madras government from 1881.

Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society

Pogson was the first woman to attempt to be elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, being nominated by her father in 1886.
Although the society had elected a few women as honorary members, all the fellows had been male up to this time. Her nomination was withdrawn when two attorneys deemed female fellows illegal under the provisions of the society's royal charter dating
from 1831, which referred to fellows only as he.
She was successfully nominated in 1920 by Oxford professor H. H. Turner, five years after the Royal Astronomical Society first opened its doors to women.

Personal

After retiring from astronomy, she married Herbert Clement Kent, a captain in the Merchant Navy, on 17 August 1902 in Red Hill, Queensland, Australia. The couple returned to England, living in Bournemouth and then London. Pogson died in Croydon.