[6] She is featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017 along with a quotation from her work On the Connection of the Physical Sciences.

[7] Somerville, the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax,[8] was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother,[9] Margaret Charters.

[11] In her autobiography Somerville recollects that on her father's return from sea he said to his wife, "This kind of life will never do, Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts".

[12] Ten-year-old Mary was then sent to an expensive boarding school in Musselburgh,[9] where she learned the first principles of writing, rudimentary French and English grammar.

When the tide was out I spent hours on the sands, looking at the star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for sand-eels, cockles, and the spouting razor-fish.

I was astonished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large pieces, and brought them to my repository.

Such duties "occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to shew my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as the ten numbers, on canvas".

[15] Her aunt Janet came to live with the family and reportedly said to her mother "I wonder you let Mary waste her time in reading, she never shews [sews] more than if she were a man."

Somerville was then sent to the village school to learn plain needlework, where she found herself annoyed that her "turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it."

In her Personal Recollections Somerville notes that the boys learned Latin at the village school, while "it was thought sufficient for the girls to be able to read the Bible; very few even learnt writing.

From my earliest years my mind revolved against oppression and tyranny, and I resented the injustice of the world in denying all those privileges of education to my sex which were so lavishly bestowed on men.

When Nasmyth advised another student to study Euclid's Elements to gain a foundation in perspective, astronomy and mechanical science, Somerville spotted an opportunity.

[25][8] She continued in the traditional role of a daughter in a well-connected family, attending social events and maintaining a sweet and polite manner, which led to her nickname as "the Rose of Jedburgh" among Edinburgh socialites.

The tutor, Mr. Craw, was a Greek and Latin scholar, and Somerville asked him to purchase elementary books on algebra and geometry for her.

[29] She also spent some time with the Oswalds family in Dunnikeir, whose daughter, a bold horsewoman who impressed Somerville, became a Greek and Latin scholar and married Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.

[40] John Playfair, professor of natural philosophy at University of Edinburgh, encouraged her studies and through him she began a correspondence with William Wallace, with whom she discussed mathematical problems.

[44] Wallace suggested that she study the writings of French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, which summarised the theory of gravity and collected the mathematical results established in the 50 years since Principia had been published.

These included Louis-Benjamin Francœur's Elements of Mechanics, Sylvestre François Lacroix' Algebra and Calculus Treatise, Jean-Baptiste Biot's Analytical Geometry and Astronomy, Siméon Denis Poisson's Treatise on Mechanics, Joseph-Louis Lagrange's Theory of Analytical Functions, Leonhard Euler's Elements of Algebra and Isoperimetrical Problems, Alexis Clairaut's Figure of the Earth, Gaspard Monge's Application of Analysis to Geometry, and François Callet's Logarithmus.

[43] In her Personal Recollections Somerville expressed the opinion that mathematical science was at a low ebb in Britain, due to a reverence for Newton that prevented scientists from adopting calculus.

In her opinion this deadlock was not broken until 1816, when Charles Babbage, John Herschel and George Peacock published a translation of the lectures of Sylvestre Lacroix, then a state-of-the-art calculus textbook.

She wrote, "I shall never forget the charm of this little society, especially the supper-parties at Abbotsford, when Scott was in the highest glee, telling amusing tales, ancient legends, ghost and witch stories.

In [astronomy] we perceive the operation of a force which is mixed up with everything that exists in the heavens or on earth; which pervades every atom, rules the motions of animate and inanimate beings, and is as sensible in the descent of a rain-drop as in the falls of Niagara; in the weight of the air, as in the periods of the moon.

In the 6th edition of Connexion (1842) she wrote, "If after the lapse of years the tables formed from a combination of numerous observations should be still inadequate to represent the motions of Uranus, the discrepancies may reveal the existence, nay, even the mass and orbit of a body placed for ever beyond the sphere of vision".

"The mass of Neptune, the size and position of his orbit in space, and his periodic time, were determined from his disturbing action on Uranus before the planet itself had been seen.

Subsequently, the book focuses on terrestrial topics, such as the most basic features of land and water, and formations such as mountains, volcanoes, oceans, rivers and lakes.

Eventually the book turns to vegetation, birds and mammals, and their geographical distribution in the Arctic, Europe, Asia, Africa, America and the Antarctic.

In line with Victorian thinking, Somerville asserts the superiority of human beings, but maintains the interdependencies and interconnectedness of creation.

Somerville maintained correspondence with a large number of leading scientists and remained engaged in current debates on facts and theories.

In 1875 astronomer Maria Mitchell was told by a college president that he "would hire a woman scientist if she was as good as Mary Somerville".

[73][85] The collection includes papers relating to her writing and published work, and correspondence with family members, scientists and writers, as well as other figures in public life.