Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, an incomparable intellectual who fell through the cracks of history

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This book review, from Nature is probably open sourced:

An incomparable intellectual who fell through the cracks of history

Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, worked at the heart of seventeenth-century scientific debates — in the shadow of her brother, Robert Boyle.

Excerpts:

The foundation of the Royal Society of London in 1660 established an institutional focus for experimental science. The society did not admit female fellows until 1945. A glance at its history gives the impression that seventeenth-century natural philosophy was an entirely male enterprise. Fortunately, feminist scholarship over the past few decades has unearthed women such as philosopher Anne Conway and writers Dorothy Moore and Mary Evelyn, who were active in the intellectual ferment of the time.

Now, Michelle DiMeo has produced a portrait of another influential female thinker who has been hiding in plain sight — as a footnote in the story of her more famous brother, chemist and Royal Society co-founder Robert Boyle. DiMeo reveals Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, as central to political, religious, philosophical and medical discussions, yet destined to be forgotten, because she obeyed the convention that women should not put their thoughts into print. DiMeo, a librarian at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has used her archival skills to trawl the papers of Ranelagh’s mostly male contemporaries to uncover her role as a public intellectual...

...Married off to Arthur Jones (later Viscount Ranelagh), Katherine had four children by the time she was 25. In 1642, she fled an uprising of Catholic rebels and settled in London with her children. She lived apart from her husband — a boor and gambler – but kept her title.

In London, she became one of the most active members of the circle of correspondents cultivated by the polymath Samuel Hartlib. The group shared, copied and discussed letters and manuscripts; Ranelagh hosted meetings in her home. Members admired her contributions on politics, religion and natural philosophy, dubbing her “the Incomparable” and citing her frequently. The interests of the circle evolved, converging on new, ‘useful’ knowledge revealed through experimental science, especially chemistry. One letter mentions Ranelagh as an early user of optical instruments such as a telescope.

Ranelagh introduced her teenage brother Robert to the circle after he returned from a tour of Europe in 1644; she became his spiritual and intellectual mentor. As he focused on chemistry, she equipped a laboratory at his Dorset home. He thanked her: “the delights I taste in it, make me fancy my laboratory a kind of Elysium” (spelling modernized). In 1668, he moved permanently into Ranelagh’s home in London’s fashionable Pall Mall...