Mary Brück

Mary Teresa Brück (née Conway; 29 May 1925 – 11 December 2008) was an Irish astronomer, astrophysicist and historian of science, whose career was spent at Dunsink Observatory in Dublin and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh in Scotland.

Early life Mary Teresa Conway was born on 29 May 1925 in Ballivor, County Meath, Ireland, the eldest of eight children. She used the Irish form of her name, Máire Treasa Ní Chonmhidhe, while attending convent school, where she showed talents for mathematics, science and music,

In 2001, she was awarded the Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh in recognition of meritorious work in diffusing the knowledge of Astronomy among the general public.

In July 2017, Dublin City University named a building after Dr. Mary Brück in recognition of her contributions to science.

The Mary Brück Building at the University of Edinburgh was also named in her honour.

Historian of science Mary Brück collaborated with her husband on a biography of the 19th-century Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth. She developed a reputation as an historian of science, specialising in the work of women in astronomy, and the history of astronomy in Scotland and Ireland. She published articles in several different journals, including the Irish Astronomical Journal, the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage and the Antiquarian Astronomer. She sat on the editorial board of the Antiquarian Astronomer. This was followed by Women in Early British and Irish Astronomy: Stars and Satellites, which described the work of women astronomers, many of whom had been overlooked previously. Mary Brück contributed five articles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and six to the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers.

She is also the author of the classic 1965 Ladybird book, The Night Sky.