For Women’s History month, I tweeted about a different early modern woman in science every day. Here’s a storify of those tweets. I thought it might be useful, in the longer format of a blog post, to provide some references for those wishing to find out more about these women. This is not intended as an exhaustive bibliography, but just a starting point. For some of these women, there are very useful books and/or articles and/or websites. For others, there are only brief mentions in primary or secondary sources. This is perhaps idiosyncratic, as I frequently list the book or article in which I first encountered an early modern woman scientist. This is also my opportunity to acknowledge many of my wonderful women (and some men) colleagues who have uncovered the lives of these early modern women, and provided me with material for teaching more inclusive courses on the history of science and medicine. On the subject of inclusivity, I note that I included only two women of color, and that’s something I’d like to do better next time I try to compose a list of women scientists in the past.
Maria Cunitz, Kepler’s Defender
2. Sophie Brahe (1556-1643)
John Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570-1601 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 258-264.
3. Caterina Sforza (1463-1509)
Meredith Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Harvard, 20125), ch 1.
4. Teodora Danti (c 1498–c 1573)
Lione Pascoli’s Vite de Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Perugini (Lives of Perugian Painters, Sculptors and Architects) (1732), pp. 75-79. This has been translated in Julia K. Dabbs (ed.), Life stories of women artists, 1550–1800: an anthology (Burlington, 2009), pp. 209-12, with introductory material by Dabbs on pp. 205-8.
5. Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh (1631-79)
6. Maria Sybilla Merian
Janice Neri, The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), ch. 5.
The Woman Who Made Science Beautiful
7. Anna Zieglerin (c. 1550–75)
Tara E. Nummedal, “Alchemical Reproduction and the Career of Anna Maria Zieglerin” Ambix, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jul. 2001) Pp. 56-68.
Tara Nummedal, “Anna Zieglerin’s Alchemical Revelations” in Alisha Rankin and Elaine Leong (eds.), Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science (Ashgate, 2011).
[Also Nummedal’s forthcoming book on Anna Zieglerin]
8. Jane Sharp (17th century)
Jane Sharp; Elaine Hobby, The Midwives Book: or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (Oxford, 1999)
Elaine Hobby, “Secrets of the Female Sex: Jane Sharp, the female reproductive body, and early modern midwifery manuals” Women’s Writing 8.2 (2001): 201-12.
Katharine Phelps Walsh, “Marketing Midwives in Seventeenth-Century London: A Re-examination of Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book,” Gender & History Vol. 26 No. 2 August 2014, pp. 223-241. (With thanks to Helen King for sending me this reference.)
9. Margaret Cavendish (1623-73)
10. Anna of Saxony (1532-85)
Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), ch. 4.
11. Susanna Wright (1697–1784)
Zara Anishanslin, Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World (Yale, 2016), pp. 158-9, 161, 308.
12. Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda (1602-65)
13. Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-99)
Massimo Mazzotti, The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
14. Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh (1615-91)
15. Denise Cavellat
16. Ellen Cotes
17. Maria Winkelmann Kirch (1670-1720)
Sorry Caroline but you were not the first, Maria was
18. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1740)
Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, 2000
19. Grand Duchess Christina
Michael H. Shank, “Setting the Stage: Galileo in Tuscany, the Veneto, and Rome” in Ernan McMullin (ed.), The Church and Galileo, pp. 57-87.
Shank notes: “Although historians of science pay little attention to her, she helped set the stage for at least three turning points in [Galileo’s] life” (p. 63)
20. Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617)
Meredith Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Harvard, 20125), ch 4.
21. Emilie du Chatelet (1706-49)
22. Paula de Eguiluz (16th century)
Pablo F. Gómez, “Incommensurable Epistemologies? The Atlantic Geography of Healing in the Early Modern Caribbean” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 44 (2014), 95-107.
Pablo F. Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
23. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)
Smallpox Vaccination in Turkey
24. Laura Bassi (1711 –78)
Paula Findlen, “Science as a Career in Enlightenment Italy: The strategies of Laura Bassi” in History of Women In the Sciences: Readings from Isis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
25. Camilla Erculiani (c.1540-c. 1590)
Meredith Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Harvard, 20125), ch 4.
26. Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714 –74)
Rebecca Messbarger, The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Morandi and Manzolini’s Anatomical Waxworks
27. Elisabeth Paulsdatter (16th century)
John Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570-1601 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 330-332.
28. Nurbanu Sultan (ca 1525 – 83)
29. Dorothea of Mansfeld (1493-1578)
Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), ch. 3.
30. Lady Frances Catchmay (d. 1629)
Before Newton 