Jane Marcet was a British writer of Genevan descent who made chemistry and political economy approachable for readers with no scientific training. Born in London, she wrote at a time when few women could study science formally, and her importance lies in the bridge she built between specialists and the general public.
The daughter of a wealthy Genevan merchant and banker, she was taught at home alongside her brothers, learning Latin, chemistry and history. At fifteen, after her mother died, she took charge of the household and her younger siblings. In 1799 she married Alexander Marcet, a physician and chemist, and the two carried out experiments together in a small home laboratory.
Her books took the form of dialogues between a patient teacher and two pupils. Through simple questions and everyday examples, this format made difficult ideas, from Humphry Davy's chemistry to David Ricardo's economics, easier to follow. After her husband died in 1822 she went through a period of deep depression, but she returned to England and kept revising her works well into old age. She died in London in 1858.
Her legacy rests largely on Michael Faraday, who remembered her as his first teacher, and on the long life of her textbooks in schools on both sides of the Atlantic.
Key works
- Conversations on Chemistry (1805), published anonymously
- Conversations on Political Economy (1816), which explained the ideas of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo
- Conversations on Natural Philosophy (1819), covering physics, mechanics and astronomy
- Mary's Grammar (1835), written for children and interspersed with stories
Books to read
- Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 In Which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments EnglishEPUB 414 KBRead online
Curiosities
A debt acknowledged
Michael Faraday wrote that when he came to know her personally, he thought of her as his first instructress. He often sent her his papers as a thank-you gift.
Economics for schoolgirls
The economist Joseph Schumpeter dismissed her political economy book as economics for schoolgirls, although her aim was to make the subject accessible to a wide public.
A classroom choice in America
In 1865 the Boston Girls' High and Normal School, the first school in America to teach science to women through laboratory work, chose her Conversations on Chemistry as its textbook.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.