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Gabrielle du Châtelet
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was married in 1725 to the Marquis du Châtelet. Her aristocratic background and beauty made it possible for her to meet mathematicians and learn mathematics. At various times she studied with Maupertuis, A.-C. Clairaut, and Samuel König. She charmed Voltaire, and lived with him for a number of years. She entered the Paris Academy of Sciences prize competition of 1737 with a paper on the nature and propagation of fire (Euler won). -
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Agnesi was exposed to mathematics from a very early age. By the age of 20 she had started work on her most important contribution to mathematics, the book Analytical Institutions, which focused on differential and integral calculus. Originally intended as a textbook for her brothers, this work was eventually published in 1748 to wide acclaim, and was later translated into English. Early sections contained elementary problems on maxima, minima, tangents, and inflection points. Also described in t -
Sophia Germain
Also Known as: Marie-Sophie Germain, Sophia Germain, Sophie Germaine Sophie Germain's father was Ambroise-Francois Germain, a wealthy middle class silk merchant and a French politician who served in the Estates Général and later in the Constituent Assembly. He later became a director of the Bank of France. Her mother was Marie-Madeleine Gruguelu, and her sisters, one older and one younger, were named Marie-Madeleine and Angelique-Ambroise. She was known simply as Sophie to avoid confusion with -
Florence Nightingale
Nightingale is most remembered for her work as a nurse in reforming hospital sanitation methods, yet she was also a pioneer in the applications of statistical analysis and methods of data presentation in medicine. She was an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics. For example, Nightingale developed the "polar-area diagram," a precursor of the pie chart, to dramatize mortality rates due to unsanitary hospital conditions during the -
Charlotte Scott
Charlotte Angas Scott was born in England. Her father, Caleb Scott, was president of Lancashire College, a Congregational minister and known as a social reformer; his father had been a reformer as well. Caleb Scott urged his daughter, Charlotte Angas Scott, to seek a university education, unusual for women in that time. She did so: she joined ten other young women at Hitchin College, soon renamed Girton College, part of Cambridge University. -
Sonya Kovalevskaya
Kovalevskaya was an influential mathematician, writer, and advocate of women's rights in the nineteenth century. She claimed to have been introduced to differential and integral calculus at the age of 11 by studying her father's old calculus notes that were papered on the nursery wall as a substitute for regular wallpaper. She went on to become the first woman to be granted a Ph.D. in mathematics when she was awarded her doctorate from Göttingen University in 1874. Many colleges and universities -
Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler
Wheeler was born in Hawarden, Iowa, to Swedish immigrants. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the direction of E.H. Moore in 1909 with work in integral equations. While working towards her doctorate, she studied in Germany under David Hilbert in the new field of functional analysis. In particular she studied infinite dimensional linear spaces. In 1918 Wheeler took a position at Bryn Mawr, where she became department chair in 1924. In 1927 Wheeler became the first woman to -
Gloria Hewitt
Gloria Conyers Hewitt was born in Sumter, South Carolina on October 26, 1935. In 1962, she became the fourth African-American women ever to receive a doctorate degree in mathematics. When asked at what point she realized her interest in pursuing a career in mathematics, she often refers to her college years at Fisk University: "I remember when I took calculus in college the only book I took home over the Christmas holidays was my calculus book. I wanted to do those word problems. I worked on one -
Lesley Sibner
Sibner was an aspiring actress as a young woman. Later, as a fine arts student at City College in New York City, she took a required calculus course, loved the subject, and immediately changed her major to mathematics. She received her Ph.D. in 1964 from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and today is a noted researcher and professor of mathematics at Brooklyn Polytechnic University. -
Dame Mary Cartwright
Mary Lucy Cartwright was the first woman mathematician elected to the Royal Society of London. While at Cambridge University, under the supervision of G.H. Hardy and E.C. Titschmarsh, her thesis on zeros of integral functions generated a series of papers and eventually led to her book on integral functions. Although she did important work with Dirichlet series, Abel summation, analytic functions regular on the unit circle, integral functions, and cluster sets, she is best known for her work with
