#kovalevsky

[ikimonodamono]

Oh Hello! Kowalewskii!

[vacuously-true]

Chung, Lovelace, Haas, Mirzakhani, Vaughan, Pipher, Falconer, Browne, Uhlenbeck, Darden, Kovalevsky, Koch, Quinn, Noether, Kent, Lauter, Germain, Johnson, Haunsperger, Riehl, Hamilton, Radunskaya, ...

Happy Mother's Day to some of the mothers of mathematics: the women today and throughout history whose work, socially and mathematically, has diminished the role gender has in determining which opportunities will be afforded a young person interested in mathematics.

There's work still to be done but we have models in these and so many other women mathematicians. These are women who have passed on a legacy of mathematics instead of genetics, but I think today is a fine day to honor them anyway.

[strictly-script]

It’s been forever since I posted anything, but then, it’s been forever since I made anything worth posting. I just finished this and I’m really proud of it! Hello summer! I am so excited to have time to make art!

[gradswe-blog]

Female Scientist Series: Sophia Kovalevsky

I came across the mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky while reading Alice Munro's short story “Too Much Happiness.” As a math major I was immediately drawn to her so I set out to learn more about her and ended up discovering an amazing person with what seemed to be endless perseverance. For this blog entry I decided to focus on the hardships Kovalevsky faced while she sought a degree in math, but her life is full of interesting twists and turns and intersects the paths of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and George Eliot. For anybody who's interested, the biography “Little Sparrow: A Portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky,” by Don H. Kennedy, is a great read (and also the main source for what follows).

Sophia Kovalevsky (1850-1891) was born into a noble Russian family during a time when little was expected of women. Girls in Russian society were required to learn French, have some understanding of literature, know how to play the piano, paint at an amateur level, and be socially capable in order to find a husband. They could travel only with parental or their husband's permission and were not allowed by law to go to university. Thankfully, Kovalevsky's family can be considered progressive for this period and recognized the talent their daughter had.

Kovalevsky grew up on a comfortable family estate in the Russian countryside which “employed” a couple hundred serfs. She was the middle of three children and did not get much attention from her parents. To try to get noticed, Kovalevsky devoted herself to her studies and was not satisfied until she excelled at them. Later in her life, while working on her thesis, she would similarly devote herself to her work – although a bit more obsessively, refusing even to go out to buy food.

One member of the family did give Kovalevsky some much needed attention: Her uncle would spend hours talking to her as an adult about philosophy and science, even though she was just a child. This exposed her to math, and even though she didn't quite know what it was, she would later write that she began to view it as a “lofty and mysterious science, which opened out to those who consecrated themselves to it a new and wonderful world not attained by simple mortals.”

Kovalevsky started to show her talent and passion in math as a teenager so her parents (who by this time were well aware of her potential), wanting to provide her with better tutors, moved the family to St. Petersburg when she was 18 years old. During this time, the 1860's, many changes took place in Russia and in Europe in general: the emancipation of the serfs let to raised conflict between the classes, and the spread of new ideas, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, let to conflict between the generations. Therefore, being from a progressive family, it was probably inevitable that soon after moving to St. Petersburg, Kovalevsky started moving in progressive circles – she believed in equality of the sexes and in social reform. It was in these circles that she got the idea to enter into a “fictitious marriage,” the sole purpose of which is to give a woman the freedom to travel without parental permission and an escort. This is how (and why) she met and married Vladimir Kovalevsky.

Kovalvsky was 18 and (considering herself an adult) wanted to take matters into her own hands regarding her education. Her reasoning in marrying Vladimir was to pursue a degree in Western Europe – she never intended to make their marriage into a real one, while he on the other hand fell in love with her very quickly. This would be the source of many difficulties in their relationship.

The couple soon moved to Heidelberg, Germany, so that Kovalevsky could audit classes from the university. For this she needed special permission from the administration, which she was the first woman to be granted. She spent three years studying here while Vladimir pursued his own studies. Kovalevsky was incredibly focused in her work and would only allow herself to take Sundays off. This resulted in her being highly respected by the faculty and receiving great references.

After what could be considered Kovalevsky's undergraduate studies, the couple moved to Berlin where Kovalevsky hoped to work with Karl W. T. Weierstrass (1815-1897), a leading mathematician in Europe at this time and one of the founders of modern analysis. The University of Berlin was more conservative than that of Heidelberg in that the administration would not let Kovalevsky even audit their classes. Nevertheless, she approached Weierstrass personally and after impressing him by solving a list of problems he assigned her to test her abilities, he took her on as a private student. Weierstrass would later say that she was the type of student an academic dreams of having – she was hard working and willing to learn, but would also question his ideas and reasoning. Kovalevsky completed her thesis in four years on a topic which is today known as the Cauchy-Kovalevsky Theorem and after Weierstrass wrote several letters and pulled some strings she finally received a doctorate in absentia from the University of Gӧttingen (and Summa Cum Laude at that).

Kovalevsky's life in these last few years was not that easy. She had a non-existent relationship with her husband and they had constant financial difficulties. Matters did not improve after she graduated – no university would take a woman as a faculty member. She became disheartened with math and left academia for about six years during which she devoted herself to writing. She moved back to Russia with Vladimir, where they finally started to have a more personal relationship and in 1878, at the age of 28, she gave birth to a daughter. Things started to look up and Kovalevsky returned to math once more. However, in 1883, due to financial ruin as a result of a bad business investment, Vladimir committed suicide. Kovalevsky was distraught, but persevered and finally, a year later, she was appointed to a faculty position at the University of Stockholm. She had mathematical success during the next several years and fell in love once more (or maybe for the first time). Unfortunately, she passed away young, at the age of 41, from pneumonia. It is rumored that her last words were “Too much happiness.”

- Iva