The Scientific Vision of Women

Mary Ward was interested in the natural world from a young age, and her enthusiasm for the smallest creatures to the largest celestial bodies shines through her artwork. In Microscope Teachings, Ward combines her finely detailed and beautifully colored illustrations with a warm and approachable writing style, encouraging that same enthusiasm in her readers.

Microscope Teachings reflects Ward’s own experiences pursuing her scientific interests. Ward lacked formal scientific training and remembered the frustration of using her first microscope. Ward’s illustrations aid those “unversed in microscopic marvels” in learning to operate a microscope, prepare specimen slides, and interpret their observations. Although written for a general audience, Ward's work is “strictly accurate in its statements, and exact in its pictorial representations of the objects described.” Precise drawings of magnified moth wings, fern spores, and newt arteries reflect her rigorous scientific approach.

Ward wrote other popular books, including Telescope Teachings, and published in scientific journals. Despite raising eight children in a precarious financial situation, Ward gained the respect of the scientific community. Prominent scientists commissioned her illustrations and she was one of three women, along with Mary Somerville and Queen Victoria, approved to receive publications from the Royal Astronomical Society. Mary Ward died at the age of forty-two near her home in Ireland, the victim of the first fatal motor vehicle accident.

Label by Brooke Guthrie