Sofia Kovalevskaya, The First Major Russian Female Mathematician

Sofia Kovalevskaya

Sofia Kovalevskaya Vasilevna, January 15, 1850 - 10 February 1891) was the first major Russian female mathematician and student of Karl Weierstrass in Berlin. In 1884, he was appointed professor at the University of Stockholm, the third woman in Europe who became a professor. He has contributed to the theory of differential equations.


Kovalevskaya's first disclosure of the calculus came from a paper on the wall of his room - sheets of paper lectures on differential and integral calculus. At the time of taking calculus formal lessons at age 15, his teacher was amazed at his speed, but he already knows all the symbols and some of those concepts.


Prevented from entering the universities in the Russian Empire (which are closed to women), she underwent a comradely marriage with a paleontology student, free to roam. So in 1868 they both moved to Heidelberg, the Kingdom of Prussia, where he studied mathematics. By studying the greatness of Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass experts, he decided to go to Berlin, only to be advised that the woman refused to go to university there. Fortunately Weierstrass agreed to give him private lessons and guiding doctoral work on differential equations.


Unable to find a good position in Prussia (Germany) and the Russian Empire, he happily accepted the offer Mittag-Leffler as a lecturer at Stockholms Universitet, recently established. There he showed himself as a teacher and researcher. In 1888 he won the Prix Bordin of authority from the French Academy of Sciences in a competition for papers to be included without a name. In the end his own country to admit it: it is the first woman elected as a corresponding member of Russian Academy of Sciences.


There are three things that make Kovalevski Sonya remembered in the world of mathematics that is:


1.she represents prejudice against women who underwent the history of mathematics
2. she represent the tradition of the great Russian mathematician
3.she contributed to the theory of differential equations