December 26, 1780

Mary Somerville (December 26, 1780 to November 29, 1872) was a Scottish woman who achieved recognition for her scientific research and writing. Somerville College at Oxford is named after her, which honor occurred after her death.There is a poignant element to this tribute in that Somerville was not just a mathematician, she was self-taught in all her fields of interest, reading Euclid in secret as a teen-ager. Her first husband's death left Mary Somerville financially secure and her second husband was supportive of her enthusiasm for science and research in a manner unusual in the 19th or 2oth century. She also had six children. 

Mary Somerville translated LaPlace's Mécanique Céleste  as, The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831). This book made her famous. Her work had a clarity missing in the original. The first use of the term 'scientist' was by William Whewell, about Somerville, when he reviewed her book, On the Connexion of the Sciences (1834).

She began receiving an annual pension of 300 pounds from the King in 1835.

Physical Geography (1848), and Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869) were the other works published in her lifetime.

From Physical Geography we excerpt a bit about gemstones:

....The turquoise is a Persian gem, of which there are two varieties; one is supposed to be the enamel of the tooth of a fossilized mastodon, the other a mineral; it is also found in Tibet and in ... Badakshan, which is the country of the lapis lazuli, mined by heating the rock, and then throwing cold water upon it. This beautiful mineral is also found in several places of the Hindoo Coosh, ...norrth of Cabool, in...Tibet, and in the Baikal mountains in Siberia. The cat's-eye is peculiar to Ceylon; the king of Kandy had one two inches broad. Topaz, beryl, and amethyst are of very common occurrence, especially in Brazil, Siberia, and other places. They are little valued, and scarcely accounted gems...

Thus, by her unseen ministers, electricity and reciprocal action, the great artificer Nature has adorned the depths of the earth and the heart of the mountains with her most admirable works, filling the veins with metals, and building the atoms of matter, with the most elegant and delicate symmetry, into innumerable crystalline forms of inimitable grace and beauty. The calm and still exterior of the earth gives no indication of the activity that prevails in its bosom, where treasures are preparing to enrich future generations of man. Gold will still be sought for in the deep mine, and the diamond will be gathered among the debris of the mountains, while time endures.