Who is she:
- A female astronomer
Notable Life Events:
- Born in 1768, to a highly learned family. Specifically, her grandfather had been a local governor while her father had turned to studying medicine after failing to qualify as a government official through the imperial examination. Her grandfather taught her astronomy, her grandmother taught her literature and her father taught her medicine, geography and mathematics
- When she was 16, she and her father went traveling around China and such an experience broadened her horizons. When she was 18, she became pen pals with many female scholars and focused on exploring astronomy and mathematics through self learning. She kept postponing her marriage until 25 when she married Zhan Mei, a renowned scholar and calligrapher.
- She became renowned for literature as well as her knowledge in mathematics and astronomy and she even taught male students
- In 1797, her grandfather passed away in the region where he worked and she went to stay there for 5 years during which she studied from his stores of books and learnt riding and martial arts from the wife of a Mongolian general
- She passed away in 1797 at the age of 29, childless. She gifted away all her written work and drafts to her best friend who passed onto her nephew who organised and published her work.
- Her contributions in astronomy and mathematics included
- Works on sun and moon eclipses as well as rotation direction of various planets in the solar system
- Being expert in the Pythagorean theorem and trigonometry and she has an essay on applying the Pythagoeran theorem to triangles which is proved to be correct
Moonlake’s thoughts on her:
This is clearly a woman who knows what she wants from her life and works to cultivate that. I have great respect for her.
English Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Zhenyi_(astronomer)
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