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Sofya Kovalevskaya

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Sofya Kovalevskaya[1]
Born(1850-01-15)15 January 1850
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died10 February 1891(1891-02-10) (aged 41)
Stockholm, Sweden
Alma materUniversity of Göttingen (PhD; 1874)
Known forCauchy–Kowalevski theorem
Kovalevskaya top
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, Mechanics
Institutions
Doctoral advisorKarl Weierstrass

Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (Russian: Софья Васильевна Ковалевская), born Sofya Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya (15 January [O.S. 3 January] 1850 – 10 February 1891), was a Russian mathematician who contributed to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world – the first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor.[2]

Early Life

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The excerpt from the 1850 birth register listing, in Russian Cyrillic, the birth of Sofia on January 3rd (Old Style date).

Sofya Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya) was born in Moscow, the second of three children. Her father, Lieutenant General Vasily Vasilyevich Korvin-Krukovsky [ru], served in the Imperial Russian Army as head of the Moscow Artillery before retiring to Polibino, his family estate in Pskov Oblast in 1858, when Kovalevskaya was eight years old. He was a member of the minor Russian nobility, of mixed Belarussian–Polish descent (Polish on his father's side), with possible partial ancestry from the royal Corvin family of Hungary, and served as Marshall of Nobility for Vitebsk province. (There may also have been some Romani ancestry on the father's side.[3])

Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna von Schubert (1820–1879), came from a family of German immigrants to St. Petersburg. They lived on Vasilievsky Island. Her maternal great-grandfather was the astronomer and geographer Friedrich Theodor von Schubert (1758–1825), who emigrated to Russia from Germany around 1785. Schubert became a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science and head of its astronomical observatory. His son, Kovalevskaya's maternal grandfather, was General Theodor Friedrich von Schubert (1789–1865), who lead the military topographic service, and was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as Director of the Kunstkamera museum.

Kovalevskaya's parents gave her a good early education. At various times, her governesses were native speakers of English, French, and German. When she was 11 years old, she was interested by a forecast of what she would learn later in her lessons in calculus; the wall of her room had been covered with pages from lecture notes by Ostrogradsky, left over from her father's student days.[4] She was tutored privately in elementary mathematics by Iosif Ignatevich Malevich.

The physicist Nikolai Nikanorovich Tyrtov noted her unusual aptitude when she managed to understand his textbook by discovering for herself an approximate construction of trigonometric functions which she had not yet seen in her studies.[5] Tyrtov called her a "new Pascal" and suggested she be given a chance to undergo further studies under the tutelage of A. N. Strannoliubskii [ru].[6] In 1866–67 she spent much of the winter with her family in St. Petersburg, where she was given private tutoring by Strannoliubskii, a well-known supporter of higher education for women, who taught her calculus. During that same period, the son of a local priest introduced her sister Anna to progressive ideas influenced by the radical movement of the 1860s, providing her with copies of radical journals of the time discussing Russian nihilism.[7]

While the word nihilist (нигилист) often was used in a negative sense, it did not have that meaning for the young Russians of the 1860s (шестидесятники):

After the famous writer Ivan Turgenev used the word nihilist to refer to Bazarov, the young hero of his 1862 novel Fathers and Children, a certain part of the "new people" used that name as well, despite its negative associations in most quarters.... For the nihilists, science appeared to be the best means of helping the mass of people have a better life. Science seemed to counteract religion and superstition, and "proved" through the theory of evolution that (peaceful) social revolutions were the way of nature. For the early nihilists, science was almost synonymous with truth, progress and radicalism; thus, the pursuit of a scientific career was viewed in no way as harming social activism. In fact, it was seen as helping progressive forces, an active blow against backwardness.[8]: 2–4 

Despite her obvious talent for mathematics, she could not complete her education in Russia. At that time, women were not allowed to attend universities in Russia and most other countries. In order to study abroad, Kovalevskaya needed written permission from her father (or husband). Accordingly, in 1868 she contracted a "fictitious marriage" with Vladimir Kovalevskij, a young paleontology student, book publisher and radical, who was the first to translate and publish the works of Charles Darwin in Russia. They moved from Russia to Germany in 1869, after a brief stay in Vienna, in order to pursue advanced studies.[9]

Notes

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  1. ↑ There are several alternative transliterations of her name. She herself used Sophie Kowalevski (or occasionally Kowalevsky) in her academic publications.
  2. ↑ "Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya.". Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
  3. ↑ Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin. "Women mathematicians". JOC/EFR. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved June 3, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Best of Russia --- Famous Russians --- Scientists". TRISTARMEDIA | Web Design, Web Development, Multimedia, Creative Web Solutions. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  5. ↑ F. V. Korvin-Krukovskii, "Sofia Vasilevna Korvin-Krukovskaia," Russkaia Starina, vol. 71, no. 9 (1891), p. 623-636.
  6. ↑ Rappaport, Karen D. "S. Kovalevsky: A Mathematical Lesson." The American Mathematical Monthly 88 (October 1981): 564–573.
  7. ↑ Sofya Kovalevskaya, A Russian Childhood, translated, edited, and introduced by Beatrice Stillman; with an analysis of Kovalevskaya's Mathematics by P. Y. Kochina. Springer-Verlag, c1978 ISBN 0-387-90348-8
  8. ↑ Ann Hibner Koblitz, Science, Women and Revolution in Russia, Routledge, 2000.
  9. ↑ Roger Cooke, The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya, Springer-Verlag, 1984.

Further reading

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  • Cooke, Roger (1984).The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya (Springer-Verlag) ISBN 0-387-96030-9
  • Kennedy, Don H. (1983). Little Sparrow, a Portrait of Sofia Kovalevsky. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-0692-2
  • Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1993). A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia -- Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary. Lives of women in science, 99-2518221-2 (2., revised ed.). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. P. ISBN 0-8135-1962-4
  • Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1987). Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia in Louise S. Grinstein; Paul J. Campbell, eds. (1987), Women of Mathematics: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, Greenwood Press, New York, ISBN 978-0-313-24849-8
  • The Legacy of Sonya Kovalevskaya: proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, held October 25–28, 1985. Contemporary mathematics, 0271-4132 ; 64. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. 1987. ISBN 0-8218-5067-9

Other websites

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