Women who submitted papers to the Royal Society after 1853: a sample

The first papers by women known to be published by the Royal Society are those by Caroline Herschel (1786) and Mary Somerville (1826) - though a letter by Ann Savile had appeared within a paper by Tancred Robinson in 1696.The list in this spreadsheet provides some insight into the women who submitted papers to the Royal Society of London after Herschel and Somerville. It has been generated from a partial transcription of the Royal Society's 'Register of Papers', undertaken by Aileen Fyfe's project team at the University of St Andrews.The Register of Papers begins in 1853, and records all papers SUBMITTED to the Society's journals, the Philosophical Transactions and the Proceedings. We transcribed all entries fronm 1853 to 1890, and thereafter transcribed two sample years per decade (ending in -0 and -5). This is NOT a list of all women authors at the Royal Society: it records the names of authors who SUBMITTED papers to the Royal Society's journals during the transcribed SAMPLE years. It gives a good indication of all women authors in the late 19thC, but is simply an illustrative sample for the 20thCCaveatsThe Register of Papers starts in 1853. We transcribed everything from 1853 to 1890. Thereafter, everything in two sample years per decade, ending in -0 and -5.Not all of these submitted papers were approved for publicationAttribution of gender was done retrospectively by our team, based on the presence of titles (e.g. Miss, Mrs) or by human recognition of forenames. There may be more women authors out there (e.g. hidden behind initials)The list is organised to show unique women authors - so if two women co-authored a paper, there are two entries for a single paper (one for each woman author)Year = year of submission of paper to RS, not necessarily year of publicationAll papers had to be submitted by a Fellow (until 1990), so if there was no Fellow as co-author, there had to be a Fellow acting as 'communicator' (all Fellows were male until 1945)Author 'identifiers' are (where possible) the Royal Society's fellows identifiers (starting NA…)