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flexibeastIn discussions about women's supposed innate ability (or more specifically, their lack thereof) in the areas of science and mathematics, people often bring up the canard of "Look at all the great discoveries in those fields - they were made by men. Women just aren't wired for that stuff."
Last year i wrote about women in mathematics who have made significant contributions to the field, but who seem to be ignored by people making the above sort of claims. Today i came across an article in The Guardian: "The scientist whom history forgot", about Emilie du Châtalet. The article notes:
Last year i wrote about women in mathematics who have made significant contributions to the field, but who seem to be ignored by people making the above sort of claims. Today i came across an article in The Guardian: "The scientist whom history forgot", about Emilie du Châtalet. The article notes:
Voltaire wasn't much of a scientist, but Du Châtelet was a skilled theoretician. Once, working secretly at night at the chateau over just one intense summer month, hushing servants to not spoil the surprise for Voltaire, she came up with insights on the nature of light that set the stage for the future discovery of photography, as well as of infrared radiation. It was a humiliating contrast for Voltaire, and especially grating when she began to probe into the still recent mathematical physics of Sir Isaac Newton.The question begs: How many times has this happened throughout history?
Voltaire could not follow any of the maths, but on political grounds he wanted to believe that Newton was perfect in all respects. Du Châtelet, however, began a research programme that went beyond Newton and led to her glimpsing notions that would lead later researchers to the idea of conservation of energy fundamental to all subsequent physics. . . .
Almost immediately after Du Châtelet's death, sharp-tongued gossips began to disparage her work. Then, as her insights entered the scientific mainstream, the idea that a woman had created these thoughts was considered so odd that even scientists who did use her ideas came to forget who had originated them.
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Date: 2006-08-04 06:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:08 (UTC)Jordanus de Nemore
Although Jordanus has been recognised as one of the best mathematicians of the Middle Ages, there is virtually no available evidence about his life, other than that he appears to have been connected with the University of Paris in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Some years ago, he was identified as Jordanus de Saxonia, the second Master General of the Dominican order, but recent scholarly work has shown this to be impossible. The translator of Du numeris datis, Barnabas Hughes, concludes that Jordanus is sine patre, sine matre, sine genealogia. He also notes in a letter, however, that "the only explanation that appealed to me (as to why no biographical information is extant) was that the name is a pseudonym. But why a nom de plume? Could it be that Jordanus was really a woman? Shades of Hypatia! Thirteenth-century women were good for writing poems, songs and prayers, but science?''
-- Victor Katz, A History Of Mathematics
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:18 (UTC)In any event, thanks. :-)
Also...
Date: 2006-08-04 07:18 (UTC)Maria Agnesi (1717-1799)
Agnesi was the eldest child of a wealth Milanese merchant, who encouraged his daughter to pursue scientific interests by hiring various distinguished professors to tutor her. By the age of 11 she was fluent in seven languages and in her teens was able to dispute important matters in such fields as mechanics, logic, zoology, and mineralogy with the best scholars of the day. Having studied the major mathematical works of the time, she began to instruct her younger brothers in the subject. She soon decided that her work, including material on algebra as well a complete treatise on the differential and integral calculus, should be published to benefit all Italian youth. This text was so clearly written that a committee of the French Academy, in authorizing its translation into French in 1749, noted that "there is no other book, in any language, which would enable a reader to penetrate as deeply, or as rapidly, into the fundamental concepts of analysis." And John Colson, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in the middle of the eighteenth century, was so impressed with the book that he learned Italian for the sole purpose of translating the work into English so that British youth would have the same benefits as those of Italy.
The Pope, too, recognized Agnesi's talents and appointed her to the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna, but Agnesi never assumed the position. Soon after her father's death in 1752 she withdrew from all scientific pursuits and spent the rest of her life in religious studies and social work among the poor.
-- Victor Katz, A History of Mathematics
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:24 (UTC)Sophie Germain (1776-1831)
Forced to study in private due to the turmoil of the French Revolution and the opposition of her parents, Germain nevertheless mastered mathematics through calculus on her own. She wanted to continue her studies at the Ecole Polytechnique when it opened in 1794, but women were not admitted as students. Nevertheless, she diligently collected and studied the lecture notes from various mathematics classes and even submitted a paper of her own to Lagrange. Mastering Gauss's Disquisitiones soon after it was published she also began a correspondence with him, using the pseudonym of M. Le Blanc. Germain was, in fact, responsible for suggesting to the French general leading the army occupying Brunswick in 1807 that he insure Gauss's safety. Gauss, naturally, did not then know the name of Sophie Germain, but the misunderstanding was cleared up with an exchange of letters. Perhaps surprisingly for a mathematician brought up in Germany, Gauss was pleased to learn that his correspondent and protextor was a woman. As he wrote, "When a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarize herself with these thorny researches, succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of them, then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents, and a superior genius."
-- Victor Katz, A History of Mathematics
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:32 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:56 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 09:22 (UTC)i must say i'm not familiar with Katz's "History"; i myself have Boyer and Merzbach's compendium (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471543977/sr=8-1/qid=1154682610/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2318099-4253412?ie=UTF8), which i've found to be rather good . . . .
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:33 (UTC)Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891)
While some little girls awoke to delicate flowers on their nursery walls, Sofia Vasilevna Korvin's room was papered with the lecture notes from Mikhail Ostrogradsky's course in calculus. Her father, an army officer, had liked mathematics and allowed Sofia to study with a tutor. She grew to like mathematics too, but could not pursue her studies because she was a woman. Russian universities did not yet permit women to attend officially, and her family would not permit her to go off alone to a European university. Sofia solved this problem by contracting a "marriage of convenience" with Vladimir Kovalevsky, a publisher of scientific and political works and himself an aspiring scientist.
With a husband, Sofia was able to go abroad and study mathematics, first at the University of Heidelberg and then in Berlin with Weierstrass. Even though Weierstrass and others made a strong case for her to the faculty senate, the University of Berlin, unlike that of Heidelberg, refused to admit a woman officially. Sofia studied privately with Weierstrass and, after writing several publishable mathematics papers, the most significant being on the theory of partial differential equations, received her doctorate in 1874 from the University of Gottingen, a university that was willing to grant doctorates in absentia.
Returning to Russia, the Kovalevskys became connubial enough to produce a daughter in 1878. A few years later, Sofia resumed the mathematical research she had briefly set aside in favor of domestic and societal concerns. Upon the death of her husband in 1883, Sofia secured a position as a professor at the University of Stockholm, a first for a woman in modern times. She soon became an active member as an editor of the European mathematical community, serving as an editor of the Swedish journal Acta Mathematica and receiving the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Sciences in 1888 for her work on the revolution of a solid body about a fixed point.
Life was difficult for Sofia Kovalevskaya as a single mother. As she wrote in a letter to a friend. "All these stupid but unpostponable practical affairs are a serioues test of my patience, and I being to understand why mean treasure good, practical housewives so highly. Were I a man, I'd choose myself a beautiful little housewife who would free me from all this." Unfortunately, Kovalevskaya had little time to fulfill her mathematical promise. In early 1891, she contracted pneumonia on a trip to France and Germany and died a few days after her return to Sweden. For years after her untimely death, her grave in Stockholm remained a place of pilgrimage, not only for mathematicians but also for supporters of the rights of women.
--Victor Katz, A History of Mathematics
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:41 (UTC)Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944)
Born Grace Chisholm of Haslemere, near London, she was educated at home and then entered Girton College, Cambridge, the first English institution where women could receive a university education. Having attained a superior score on the Cambridge Tripos exam in 1892, she decided to go to Gottingen to continue her studies because there was no possibility of advanced study in England. Felix Klein was willing to accept women students, but only after he had assured himself through a persona interview that they would succeed. (There were other members of the faculty who objected to admitting women under any conditions.) Grace Chisholm earned her Ph.D. in 1894, becoming the first women to receive a German doctorate in mathematics through the regular procedure. In 1896, she married William Young, an English mathematician who had been her tutor at Girton.
The Young spent the next 44 years in a partnership fruitful both in mathematics and in children (six). Although most of the more than 200 mathematical papers and books which ensued were in William Young's name, Grace had a major role in their production. As William noted in an article of 1914, he had discussed the major ideass of the work with his wife, and Grace had elaborated the argument and put the paper into publishable form. Their daughet wrote that her father could only generate ideas when he was stimulated by a sympathetic audience. Not only did Grace provide this audience, but she also ahd the initiative and stamina to complete the various undertakings her hsuband proposed. William died at their home in Switzerland after the outbreak of World War II left Grace in England. She died in 1944, just before she was to receive an honorary degree from the Fellows of Girton College. Two of their sons as well as one of their granddaughters also became mathematicians.
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:53 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:48 (UTC)Emmy Noether (1882-1936)
Emmy Noether received the normal upbringing of an upper-middle-class German-Jewish girl, attending finishing school, studying the piano, and taking dance lessons. It was not until 1900, after further study of French and English that she passed the Bavarian state examinations to qualify to teach in the schools. But at about this same time her interest shifted from languages to mathematics and she spent the next three years auditing mathematics courses at the University of Erlangen, where her father was a professor of mathematics. In fact, in her first semester she was one of only two women allowed even to audit courses. When in 1904 the University officially permitted women to register, she became a regular student and, four years later, received her doctorate with a dissertation on invariants of ternary biquadratic forms.
Noether remained at Erlangen for several more years, until in 1915 David Hilbert called her to Gottingen to assist him in his study of general relativity. Although as a woman she was not permitted to teach officially or to receive a salary, Hilbert arranged for her to teach courses that were given under his own name. He in fact argued unsuccessfully in the University Senate on her behalf: "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as Privatedozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse." It was not unilt after the changes in Germany at the end of World War I that she was able to receive an official position at the university and, after 1922, even a modest salary. During the next ten years at Gottingen, her influence was felt the most, both in Germany, and, though her visit in 1928-1929 to Moscow, in the Soviet Union as well. In 1932, she was the only woman mathematician invited to give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich.
Her world, as well as the world of many of Germany's mathematicians, changed suddenly in early 1933 on the coming of the Nazis to power. As a Jew, she lost her teaching positiong at Gottingen, and, along with many of her colleagues, was forced to take refuge abroad. A positiong was found for her at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, beginning in fall 1933, a location that was close enough to Princeton for her to participate regularly in activites at the Institute for Advanced Study. She died suddenly, in April 1935, after seemingly successful surgery for removal of a tumor.
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Date: 2006-08-04 07:53 (UTC)last one, my fingers are staring to stiffen
Date: 2006-08-04 07:53 (UTC)Ada Byron King (Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852)
Augusta Ada Byron King Lovelace was the child of George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, who left England five weeks after his daughter's birth and never saw her again. She was raised by her mother, Anna Isabella Millbanke, a student of mathematics herself, so she received considerably more mathematics education than as usual for girls of her time. Athough she never attended any university, she was tutored privately by, and was able to consult with, well-known mathematicians, including William Frend and Augustus De Morgan. In 1833 she met Charles Babbage and soon became interested in his Difference Engine. Her husband, the Early of Lovelace, was made a Fellow of the Royal Socieyt in 1840 and through this connection Ada was able to gain access to the books and papers she needed to continue her mathematical studies. Her major mathematical work, discussed in the text, is a heavily annotated translation of a paper by the Italian mathematician L. F. Menabrea dealing with Babbage's Analytical Engine. Interestingly, the paper was published using only her initials, A.A.L. It was evidently not considered proper in midnineteenth century England for a woman of her class to publish a mathematical work.
-- Victor Katz, A History of Mathematics