Ryan Donnell for The New York Times
PAIRED Ekaterina Dashkova, who once met Ben Franklin, was the first woman to lead a science academy.
Ryan Donnell for The New York Times
Sue Ann Prince curated an exhibit about the two.
Posted on 03/13/2006 8:02:13 PM PST by neverdem
PHILADELPHIA — You would not expect to find someone sharing star billing with Benjamin Franklin in this city, especially during the 300th anniversary of his birth.
But while everywhere else in town Franklin is being lionized as the printer, scientist and statesman, an exhibition at the American Philosophical Society, which he founded, pairs him with an unlikely contemporary, Ekaterina Dashkova, a Russian princess whom few Americans have ever heard of.
A noblewoman who married a prince, a teenage mother and a friend of a monarch, Princess Dashkova seemed to have nothing in common with Franklin, an elderly self-made man of the New World and enemy of George III. Yet both were vivid personalities and exemplars of the Enlightenment.
If one of Franklin's many achievements was the creation of America's first learned society, Dashkova's foremost distinction was to be the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences. It is a rarity to this day.
The princess took over directorship of the decrepit Imperial Academy of Sciences in Russia and, though not a scientist herself, restored it to prominence and intellectual respectability. This came at a critical time in the history of science, its transformation from what was called natural philosophy, often practiced by gifted amateurs, to a professional enterprise.
The two met only once, in Paris in 1781, when Franklin was 75 and Dashkova 37. Nothing of what they talked about is recorded, said Sue Ann Prince, the exhibition curator, "but my guess is they had a good time together."
Franklin enjoyed the company of intelligent women, and the two evidently left impressed with each other. Franklin soon wrote, inviting her to become the first woman to join the Philosophical Society, and the only one to be so honored for another 80 years. Later, Dashkova reciprocated...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Well! This is CLEARLY a crude attempt to sneak more royalist propaganda under our noses! Down with King George!
Fascinating.
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