Pat Michaelson is a recently retired professor of English and Gender Studies; she specialized in 18th- and 19th-century British novels and, especially, Jane Austen. She and her husband, Joel Bowman, have spent summers on Nantucket since 1992. Since 2012 or so, she has volunteered for the MMA by giving tours of the historic Maria Mitchell House. Round about 2014, she and Jascin Leonardo Finger started thinking about a celebration in honor of Maria’s 200th birth anniversary, which came to fruition in the first MMWISS symposium, in 2018. As an educator and mentor to her own students, Pat especially admires Maria’s extraordinary commitment to higher education for women and the care and energy she devoted to her students. As a Quaker, Pat admires Maria’s no-nonsense attitude, including to her own fame, and her persistence in her studies of the skies. Maria’s letters are a constant inspiration.