Olga Tsuberbiller (Ольга Николаевна Цубербиллер)
Olga was a Russian mathematician famous for creating the textbook Problems and Exercises in Analytic Geometry. The book has been used as a standard text for high schools in Russia since its creation in 1927 and still is widely used nowadays.
Olga Tsuberbiller (born Olga Nikolaevna Gubonina) was born in Moscow, in 1885.
Her mother was engaged in farming and her father was employed by the Chinese Eastern Railway.
She was the granddaughter of the industrialist Pyotr Gubonin and spent part of her youth on the family's estate at Gurzuf (Yalta, Crimea). The resort, which now makes up Gurzuf was founded by Gubonina's grandfather and uncle. The two designed the 93 hotels and summer cottages and it quickly became a favorite place of writers, as it had been in earlier years for Alexander Pushkin.
Olga immediately began teaching analytical geometry in the Bestuzhev Courses, right after graduating from the courses herself.
The Bestuzhev Courses in St.Petersburg were the largest and most prominent women's higher education institution in Imperial Russia.
She was married once, hence the last name Tsuberbiller. Although she was widowed during the Russian Civil War.
Olga counseled and tutored students and worked to popularize the study of math, while she was working in the women's courses.
She also was a professor at the First Moscow State University.
In 1923, Tsuberbiller met and became friends with Sophia Parnok, a famous Russian poet of a Jewish descent. The exact nature of their relationship wasn't clear, because Sophia didn't refer to Olga in the same sexual context as she described the rest of her relationship with female lovers.
While occupying an important place in her life, Tsuberbiller was a protector, as expressed in the poem cycle Half-voiced, which describes Tsuberbiller as a type of guardian angel.
Olga became Parnok's closest friend, and when Parnok's lover Ludmila Erarskaya was hospitalized for a mental break, Tsuberbiller was the one to whom Parnok turned to regain her equilibrium. Parnok moved in with Tsuberbiller, though Tsuberbiller was already busy providing care for her mother and her brother, who was at the time unemployed.
In 1927, Tsuberbiller published the first edition of "Problems and Exercises in Analytic Geometry", which became a standard text in Soviet high schools.It is still a standard text in Russian high schools and technical institutions.
By 1928, Parnok had begun to have serious health issues and Tsuberbiller, who was also ill took her to Ukraine for the summer.
In 1930, Tsuberbiller became a professor at the Institute of Fine Chemical Technology and at the end of that same year, she and Parnok moved to a new apartment on Nikitsky Boulevard with more room where the couple could regularly entertain colleagues of Tsubersbiller's.
Tsuberbiller and Parnok must have had a kind of "open" relationship, because Sophia openly dated other women while still living with Olga, and the latter allowed Sophia freedom.
Sophia died while living with Olga and she took responsibility for Parnok's literary estate upon Parnok's death.
Soon after Parnok' death, Tsuberbiller began a relationship with Concordia Antarova,a noted opera singer.
Tsuberbiller became one of the Honored Scientists of the Russian Soviet Federative Republic in 1955. As she had with Parnok, Tsuberbiller took care of Antarova through various illnesses until her death in 1959. She retired from the university in 1969.
Tsuberbiller died on 28 September 1975 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetry near Antarova.
Olga was featured in the series "Butch Heroes" , the art project by Ria Brodell about butch lesbians from all around the globe and throughout the history.