Elisabeth Hevelius

Elisabeth Hevelius, born Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann and living from 1647 to 1693, is considered one of the first female astronomers. Born in Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland, then a mostly German-speaking city in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, she grew up in a wealthy merchant family, received an education that included languages, Latin and the natural sciences, and in 1663 married the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, who was thirty-six years older. From 1664 she regularly assisted with observations at his observatory in Danzig and became his observing partner, measuring star positions with large sextants and octants, and Edmond Halley found the couple's measurements accurate when he visited in 1679. After Johannes died in 1687 she prepared three of his unfinished books for publication, among them the star catalogue Prodromus Astronomiae and the celestial atlas Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia, drawing on observations she had made herself. A crater on Venus and the minor planet 12625 Koopman are named in her honour.