Mary Acworth Evershed


Mary Acworth Evershed was a British astronomer and scholar. Her work on Dante Alighieri was written under the pen name M.A. Orr. Although her middle name is increasingly appearing as Ackworth, this is incorrect. She always gave it as Acworth, and it appeared as such in both her obituaries. The one appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society was written by her nephew A. David Thackeray, who presumably would have known. The first appearance of this incorrect version could well have occurred in the proposal of Mary to be a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society; the correct spelling appears when she was subsequently elected a Fellow.

Early life

Mary Acworth Orr was born to Lucy Acworth and Andrew Orr on 1 January 1867. Her father was an officer in the Royal Artillery. Mary grew up in Wimborne and South Stoke in Somerset.
When she was 20, Orr travelled abroad with her sisters, and when in Florence began a study of the works of Dante which led to her lifelong interest in astronomical references in Dante's poems.

Astronomical career

In 1890 Orr moved with her family to Australia. She found there was no good guide to the southern stars, so wrote An Easy Guide to the Southern Stars, with the encouragement of John Tebbutt, the leading astronomer in Australia at the time.
In 1895, she moved back to England and met fellow British astronomer John Evershed when they both participated in an expedition to view a total solar eclipse of 9 August 1896 in Norway Orr subsequently joined the British Astronomical Association. At this time the BAA enjoyed the membership of intellectual women barred from the all-male Royal Astronomical Society. During this time she became friends with Agnes Clerke and Annie Scott Dill Maunder, both notable for their contributions to historical astronomy.
Orr married Evershed in 1906. Up to this time he had worked as an industrial chemist, with solar physics as a hobby, but in 1906 was offered a post as assistant astronomer at Kodaikanal Observatory in India. Mary and John moved to Kodaikanal to allow him to take up the post in 1907. While in India, Mary collected plants from the region, which were ultimately deposited in the British Museum herbarium.
In 1916 Mary was elected to the membership of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. On the 9 May 1924 as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Lastly she directed the BAA’s Historical Section from its inception in 1930 to 1944. Throughout her life, Evershed travelled to numerous solar eclipses, including Norway in 1896, Algiers in 1900, Western Australia in 1922, Yorkshire in 1927, and Greece/Aegean Sea in 1936.

Dante scholarship

Evershed was also greatly interested in poetry, and while she loved Dante's work, she was worried about his cosmography. Her 1914 book Dante and the Early Astronomers helped clarify Dante's science, as accurate as it could be given existing knowledge.

Awards and honours