Maria Margaretha Kirch

Maria Margaretha Kirch (1670 to 1720), born Winckelmann and called Kirchin in the sources of her time, was a German astronomer and one of the first famous astronomers of her period. She was educated early by her father, a Lutheran minister, and by the time she was 13 she had lost both parents. Her brother-in-law Justinus Toellner and the self-taught astronomer Christoph Arnold, who lived at Sommerfeld, taught her, and she became Arnold's apprentice and assistant. Through him she met Gottfried Kirch, thirty years her senior and trained under Johannes Hevelius, and they married in 1692. They had four children, all of whom studied astronomy. In 1700 the couple moved to Berlin, where the elector Frederick III appointed Gottfried astronomer royal. She became known for her writing on the conjunctions of the sun with Saturn, Venus and Jupiter in 1709 and 1712. Women could not attend German universities then, but astronomy was done largely outside them, and she worked as one of the few women active in the field in the early 1700s.