A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Kirch, Mary Margaret

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KIRCH, MARY MARGARET,

Of Leipsic, Germany, was the daughter of Matthias Winkelman, a Lutheran divine. She married, in 1692, Godfrey Kirch, an eminent astronomer, of Luben, in Lower Lusatia, who, when appointed royal astronomer, in 1700, in the academy of sciences at Berlin, found in his wife an intelligent assistant, and an able calculator. She discovered, in 1702, a comet; and. In 1707, she observed that remarkable Aurora Borealis which the astronomers of Europe noticed in their memoirs. The husband died in 1710, and the following year his wife published "A Discourse on the approaching Conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, &c." She was equally eminent for her private virtues as for her talents, and died at Berlin, in 1720, aged fifty.