Part V Outstanding mathematicians

Text 1. Sophia Kovalevska.

Sophia Kovalevska lived and worked in the second half of the 19^th century.

She was born in Moscow on January 15, 1850 in a well-off family of an artillery general, Korvin-Krukovsky. Her father, a well-educated person, insisted on giving his two daughters and one son a good education.

Though Sophia liked literature very much, she showed an unusual gift in mathematics, too. When she was 12 she surprised her teacher by suggesting a new solution for the determination of the ratio of the diameter of the circle to its circumference.

One of the walls of her room was papered with sheets from the book Higher Mathematics by Ostrogradsky.

In 1866, Sofia and her elder sister were taken to St. Petersburg where Sophia was allowed to go on with her studies. But as the women were not permitted to attend public lectures, she was obliged to read privately. Her teacher was Stranolyubsky, an ardent supporter of the cause in general and women education in particular. He suggested that she should apply for permission to attend lectures at the University, which she did.

Although the permission was granted, she was not allowed to take examinations, to say nothing taking a degree.

The only possible way for her was to go abroad. But in this case there was a condition which was to be observed: if a woman wanted to go abroad, she should be married. In 1868 she married Vladimir Kovalevsky and soon they left for Vienna where she began to study physics at the University.

In 1870 the Kovalevskys went to Berlin, Sophia succeeded not only in covering the University course but also in writing three dissertations, for which the University of Gottingen granted her a Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in absentia. They even excused her from oral examinations in consideration. of the scientific value of her dissertations, one of which ”On the Theory of the Partial Differential Equations”, was considered one of her most remarkable works.

Some years later the Kovalevskys returned to St. Petersburg. Despite the efforts of Mendeleyev, Butlerov and Chebyshev, Sophia Kovalevska, an outstanding scientist already, could not get any position at the University and was obliged to turn to journalism. But as she has made up her mind to take her Magister’s Degree, she returned to Berlin to complete her work on the refraction of light in crystals.

It was only in 1883 that she was given an opportunity on the results of her research at a session held in Odessa, but again no posts followed. That is why, when she was offered lectureship at Stockholm University, she willingly accepted the offer.

In 1888 she achieved the greatest of her successes, winning the highest prize offered by the Paris Academy of Sciences for the solution of a complicated problem: to perfect in one important point the theory of the movement of a solid body about an immovable point. The solution suggested by her made a valuable addition to the results submitted by Euler and Lagrange. The prize was doubled as recognition of the unusual merits of her work.

In 1889 Sophia Kovalevska was awarded another prize, this time by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Soon in spite of her being the only woman-lecturer in Sweden, she was elected professor of mathematics and held the post until her death.

Along with her scientific and pedagogical work she carried out a good deal of literary work, took part in editing the journal “Acta Mathematica”, and translated Chebyshev’s works into French. She was able to do it owing to the thorough knowledge of foreign languages. In consideration of her literary work she was elected member of the Literary Club in Stockholm, where she used to meet Ibsen and Greg with whom she made friends.

Unfortunately, Sophia Kovalevska died at the age of 41 in 1891. She had won recognition even in her own country where she was elected a Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.