Scientist of the Day - Mary Proctor
Portrait of Mary Proctor, carte de visite, 1885, Royal Society of London (royalsocietypublishing.org)
Mary Proctor, an Irish/American popular science writer, died Sep. 11, 1957, at the age of 95. She was born on Apr. 1, 1862, in Dublin, Ireland, a double- whammy from which she recovered nicely. Her father, Richard A. Proctor, was also a popular science writer, or would be; at the time of Mary's birth, he was working on a book, Saturn and its Systems, which would be published in 1865. This is a wonderful book, which we featured in a post on Proctor, but it had no market, being too scholarly for the public and not scholarly enough for professional astronomers. But Proctor learned his lesson, and was soon writing books such as Other Worlds than Ours which did find a popular market. We have some 30 books by Richard in our collections. Mary was taught both astronomy and the craft of popular science writing from her father, and she would become just as popular with readers as Richard.
Title page, The Romance of Comets (1926), by Mary Proctor, 1926 Linda Hall Library)
Sometime after 1880, father and daughter (and other children) moved to the United States and settled in St. Joseph, Missouri, which was an intermittent home for Mary and her siblings until World War I. Richard died in 1888, and Mary had to forge her own way, which she did well. She published almost as many books as her father. Sadly, we have only two of those in our collections. Since most of our books of that era came to us from the library of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, or from the Engineering Societies Library of New York, it would appear that they did not acquire Mary’s books, perhaps because she regularly wrote for young adults and her books often have the word “children” or “romance“ in the title. Indeed, the two books we do own both have one of those words in the title. We will get to those two shortly. But first I want to mention Mary’s role as a pioneer science journalist.
The Times Tower, New York City, where Mary Proctor observed Comet Halley, May 1-18, 1910, wood engraving in The Children’s Book of the Heavens, by Mary Proctor, 1924 (Linda Hall Library)
I do not know whom modern science journalists consider the mother or father of their profession, but Mary Proctor would seem to be an excellent candidate. Like her father, she wrote for many popular periodicals, but that was not really journalism. But in 1904, she began writing columns and pieces for the New York Times (NYT), where she functioned as a true science reporter. For example, as the return of Comet Halley was awaited in 1910, she wrote dozens of articles on what the public should expect, and then, when the comet did reappear in the spring, she covered it like a beat reporter. She had excellent rapport with eminent astronomers such as E. E. Barnard at the Yerkes Observatory, and they allowed her ready access to breaking astronomical events. It helped that the NYT had an editor, Carr Van Anda, who liked to put science in the news.
Comet Halley, photograph by E. E. Barnard, Yerkes Observatory, May 4, 1910, in The Romance of Comets (1926), by Mary Proctor, opp. p. 110, 1926 Linda Hall Library)
As for the two Mary Proctor books we own, one is called The Children’s Book of the Heavens (1924), which is not at all a children’s book, and the other is The Romance of Comets (1926). Both books are well illustrated, as was to be expected, and we include a few images from each here. I read quite a bit of The Romance of Comets, and when she reached the return of Comet Halley, I was impressed by Mary’s narrative and by her enterprising fortitude. As the comet neared the Earth, she got permission from NYT management to access their building at 3:00 AM on the morning of May 1 and rise to the roof of the 23-story skyscraper, so she could have an unobstructed view of the comet (third image). She saw little that first early morning – seeing was poor in the city – but she returned the next night, and the next, and finally on May 4, she could see the comet with its immense tail in all its glory. She continued with the early morning shift for two more weeks. That was one dedicated reporter! In her 1926 book, she included a photo of Comet Halley taken on May 4 by Barnard with the 40- inch Yerkes refractor, which Barnard had sent her (fourth image). It is still the photo everyone uses when they illustrate Comet Halley's 1910 appearance.
Title page, The Children’s Book of the Heavens, by Mary Proctor, 1924 (Linda Hall Library)
William and Caroline Herschel at the telescope, drawing in The Children’s Book of the Heavens, by Mary Proctor, 1924 (Linda Hall Library)
Mary was a popular lecturer, getting her start at the Congress for Women at the World’s Columbia’s Exposition in Chicago on 1893, and she toured regularly in the United States, even making a successful lecture tour of Australia before World War I. When war broke out, she could not return to the U.S., so she moved back to England, where she continued to write books and lecture. As she aged and was unable to lecture or write, poverty threatened, until a committee headed by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson successfully petitioned the British government for a civil pension for Proctor – and this in 1943, in the middle of World War II! It is heartening that she had won the support of professional scientists like Thompson.
Portrait of Mary Proctor, age 70, photograph, 1932, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk)
I was unable to discover where Mary is buried. Her father Richard was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in New York, where he died of yellow fever, but it does not appear that Mary shares his gravesite.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
