Maria Clara Eimmart (27 May 1676 – 29 October 1707), was a German astronomer, engraver and designer. She was the daughter and assistant of Georg Christoph Eimmart the Younger.[1]
Early life
editMaria Clara Eimmart was born on 27 May 1676 in Nuremberg to Maria Walther and the artist and astronomer Georg Christoph Eimmart the Younger. She was their only surviving child; an older brother had died in infancy in 1669.[2] When Eimmart was about two years old, her father built an astronomical observatory on the Vestnertor bastion of the Nuremberg city wall, north of Nuremberg Castle.[2]
Eimmart was educated by her father, who taught her painting, etching, Latin, French and mathematics. She became interested in astronomy while young and assisted with work at the observatory. A drawing she made of a Vestal Virgin in 1691, when she was about 15, survives in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Between 1693 and 1698, she made about 235 drawings of the phases of the Moon.[2]
Marriage and family
editIn 1706, Eimmart married Johann Heinrich Muller (1671-1731), her father’s pupil and successor, who had become director of the Eimmart observatory in 1705.[3] Muller also taught physics at the Nuremberg Gymnasium, where Eimmart assisted her husband.
Muller was so influenced by the family love for astronomy that he became a diligent amateur and afterwards a professor at Altorf, where he used his skill in depicting comets, sun-spots, and lunar mountains aided by Maria Clara.
In the early years of their relationship, their associates included the two Rost Brothers, who were novelists and astronomers, and Doppelmayer, a historian of astronomy.
Just a year after her marriage, Maria Clara Eimmart died in childbirth in Nuremberg.[1]
Paintings and illustrations
editIn 2012 Markus Heinz of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin discovered two paintings by her of a total solar eclipse that was seen in Nuremberg in 1706. These were known to have existed but were also thought lost. These paintings are in excellent agreement with text descriptions of the event and are now of considerable scientific importance, being a unique depiction by a trained astronomer of the solar corona during the Maunder minimum.[4]
Eimmart is best known for her exact astronomical illustrations done in pale pastels on dark blue cardboard.[5][6] Between 1693 and 1698, Eimmart made over 350 drawings of the phases of the moon.[1][5][6] This collection of drawings, drawn solely from observations through a telescope, was entitled Micrographia stellarum phases lunae ultra 300.[5] Twelve of these were given to Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, a scientific collaborator of her father's, and ten survive in Bologna, together with three smaller studies on brown paper.[3][5] Eimmart’s continuous series of depictions became the basis for a new lunar map.[1][7] In 1706, Eimmart made two illustrations of the total eclipse at Nuremberg.[4] There are also some drawings of planets and comets.[5][8]
Gallery
edit
Phase of the Moon observed
Second Phase of the Moon
Illustration of the full Moon
Phase of Mercury Observed by Johannes Hevelius
Phase of Venus
Aspect of Mars
Aspect of Jupiter
Aspect of Saturn
Comets
Paraselene and Parhelion
Astronomical illustrations
See also
editNotes
edit- 1 2 3 4 Schiebinger, Londa (1991). The mind has no sex? : women in the origins of modern science (1st Harvard pbk. ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674576254.
- 1 2 3 Gaab, Hans (1 October 2022). "Eimmart, Clara". Neue Deutsche Biographie Online. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
- 1 2 Jeffares, Neil. "Maria Clara Eimmart". Dictionary of pastellists before 1800. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- 1 2 Hayakawa, H.; Lockwood, M.; Owens, M.J.; Sôma, M.; Besser, B.P.; van Driel‐Gesztely, L. (January 2020). "Graphical Evidence for the Solar Coronal Structure during the Maunder Minimum: Comparative Study of the Total Eclipse Drawings in 1706 and 1715". J. Space Weather and Space Climate. 11: 1. doi:10.1051/swsc/2020035. ISSN 2115-7251.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Maria Clara Eimmart". Museo della Specola. University of Bologna. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Full Moon". Art Gallery of Ontario. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
- ↑ "Georg Christoph & Maria Clara Eimmart". Linda Hall Library. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
- ↑ "Maria Clara Eimmart: Phase of the Moon, Phases of Venus, Aspect of Jupiter, Aspect of Saturn". Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope. Institute and Museum of the History of Science. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
Literature
edit- Hans Gaab: Zum 300. Todestag von Maria Clara Eimmart (1676–1707). In: Regiomontanusbote. 20, 4/2007, S. 7–19.
- Hans Gaab: Maria Clara Eimmart. Eine Nürnberger Astronomin. In: Nadja Bennewitz, Gaby Franger: Geschichte der Frauen in Mittelfranken. Alltag, Personen und Orte. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2003, S. 145–152.
- Ronald Stoyan: Die Nürnberger Mondkarten. Teil 1: Die Mondkarte von Georg Christoph Eimmart (1638–1705) und Maria Clara Eimmart (1676–1707). In: Regiomontanusbote. 14, 1/2001, S. 29–39.
- Karl Christian Bruhns (1877). . Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 5. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. p. 758.
- Siegmund Günther (1885). . Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 22. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. pp. 583–585.
- Adolf Wißner (1959), "Georg Christoph Eimmart", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot) 4: 394–394, (full text online)
