Maria Clara Eimmart (1676–1707)

Abstract

At the end of the seventeenth century, in an era when photography did not exist yet, and therefore it could not be used in support of astronomy, other kinds of skills were needed for this activity. For example, in Nuremberg, Germany one could have seen at night, on the roofs of the houses near the city walls, a woman observing at the eyepiece of a telescope. She is famous for her observations, but they are not of such kind that can fill in the catalogs with numbers. Rather, she needed to faithfully report what she was seeing with her drawings. Patiently, and unconcerned by the cold weather, night after night she composed these tables with comets, sunspots, eclipses, planets and especially with lunar mountains. Her name was Maria Clara Eimmart.

The great men of science are supreme artists. (Martin H. Fischer)