As a young girl Maria and her father studied the stars together using his telescope. At age 12 she helped her father calculate the timing of an eclipse and by age 14 local sailors asked her to perform their navigational computations in preparation for whaling voyages. In 1847 William Mitchell was cashier at Pacific National Bank on Main Street and his family lived on the top floor of the bank. Maria and William often spent evenings on the roof sweeping” the sky with their telescope and looking at the stars. On October 1 of that year Maria was stargazing alone on the roof when she spotted an uncharted fuzzy object that she had never seen before. She ran to get her father who confirmed that she had discovered a comet. Known informally as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet” (and formally as C/1847 T1), the discovery made Maria Mitchell an international star. Prior to her discovery, the King of Denmark had announced the prize of a gold medal to anyone who discovered a “telescopic” comet, or a comet that could not be seen with the naked eye. True to his word, the king awarded Maria a gold medal, which ended her quiet island life and launched her into the public eye. From then on her life was one of firsts.

Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, into the American Association For The Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Society as well as the first woman to be female federal employee when she later worked for the US Nautical Almanac Office.