Check out Google’s homepage today. That’s Maria Mitchell, the first professional female American astronomer. The comet she discovered in 1847 (by spying from her roof?) became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.”
King Frederick of Denmark awarded her a medal for her achievements; the medal read, “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars.”
My publicist at Ballantine arranged this, by the way, to mark the release of my new novel, THE NIGHT OF THE COMET. They’re surprisingly powerful, those publicists.