'The Duchess was a vanishingly rare creature: a self-taught natural philosopher writing in the decades when natural philosophy was developing into what we now call science, a professionalized field that would embrace the new disciplines of astronomy, geography, mathematics, and physics. She also belonged to an emergent species: the female intellectual.'

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/pure-wit-the-revolutionary-life-of-margaret-cavendish-francesca-peacock-book-review