Table of Contents
| 1. | Introduction |
| 2. | Famous Women in Mathematics |
| 3. | Conclusion |
| 4. | Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) |
| 5. | External References |
20 January 2021
Reading Time: 4 Minutes
"Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male"
-Margaret Wertheim
She was denied education; she was denied expression;
They tried to chain her soul for centuries but all in vain!
She rose from the ashes just like a phoenix and went on to rewrite history.
Cuemath celebrates the indomitable spirit of women and wishes you all, a Happy International Women’s Day!
On account of Women’s Day, we want to celebrate the women who have revolutionized Mathematics through their path-breaking accomplishments.
Also read
- 15 Famous Mathematicians and Their Contributions
- 40 Interesting Facts About Maths
- Baudhayana | The Great Indian Mathematician
- Shakuntala Devi: A Human Computer
Downloadable PDF
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A Tribute to the Women in Mathematics |
Famous Women in Mathematics
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Hypatia (AD 315-415)
Hypatia of Alexandria was the first woman who made an invaluable contribution to Mathematics by teaching and inspiring her female contemporaries.
She was the daughter of Theon, a renowned mathematician of Alexandria. Mathematicians all over the world revere her commentaries on Arithmetica and Conics of Apollonius, and description of the early hydrometer.
Hypatia refined several scientific instruments, wrote math textbooks, and developed a more efficient long division method. Hypatia wrote a piece on Diophantus's thirteen volume Arithmetica, which contains 100 mathematical problems, whose solutions are proposed using algebra.
She also wrote an article on conic sections, but these writings have been lost in the hole of time.
Read more about Hypatia of Alexandria.
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Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-1749)
A French physicist, mathematician, and author during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe became famous for her brilliant commentaries and clarifications on Newton’s Principia Mathematica.
Her most important contributions to science were her elucidation of the concepts of energy and energy conservation.
She authored a book on philosophy and science called ‘Institutions de Physique’.
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Sophie German (1766-1831)
geometry is nothing more than algebra, in pictures."
Sophie was a fierce and resilient mathematician who secretly explored her father’s library to gain mathematical knowledge. Her family tried its best to discourage her but could not stop this self-made mathematician. Sophie worked in tandem with Legendre on his work on the number theory.
He mentioned her in his work Supplément to his second edition of the Théorie des Nombres, where he described it as ‘very ingenious’.
She was the first woman to be awarded by the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1816 for her work on elasticity theory. Today, the award is known as Sophie Germain Prize!
Also, she is best known for her groundbreaking work on Fermat’s Last Theorem which is regarded to be one of the most challenging puzzles.
Read more about Sophie German.
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Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
Ada Lovelace was an absolute genius and the world’s first computer programmer. Charles Babbage called her “ the enchantress of numbers ”.
She worked along with Charles Babbage and invented a computer program that she called “The plan”, which later became known as ‘The Analytical Engine of 1843’. She assisted him on his work on ‘ the analytical engine and generated an algorithm to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers – the first computer program ever.
Read more about Ada Lovelace.
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Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891)
Sofia was a Russian mathematician, and her most significant achievement was to receive the appointment of a full professorship at the University Of Stockholm.
She completed three doctoral papers. They were: “On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations”, “On the Reduction of a Certain Class of Abelian Integrals of the Third Rank to Elliptic Integrals,” and “Supplementary Remarks and Observations on the Laplace’s Research on the Form of Saturn’s Rings.”
Credited to be the first woman editor of a scientific journal, Sofia gave the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya Theorem and made a significant contribution to Mechanics and partial differential equations.
Read more about Sofia Kovalevskaya.
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Shakuntala Devi (4 NOVEMBER 1929 – 21 APRIL 2013)
A woman who could calculate anything and everything even faster than a computer! Shakuntala Devi was rightly known as the ‘Human Computer’ and also found a place in the Guinness book of records for her exceptional calculating ability.
People who attended her shows would randomly ask her numbers to calculate or find the day with the date provided. Her answers were always perfect and faster than they would expect. Many people at the top universities wondered, “How Shakuntala Devi Calculates?”.
She could multiply two randomly picked 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds and also gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds.
In the year 1980, she contested in the election for the parliament seat in two different localities against Indira Gandhi and lost. Devi has been a respected personal astrologer to many politicians, movie stars, and business personnel.
Her books, ‘Figuring: The Joy of Numbers’ and ‘The World of Homosexuals’ are works of impeccable finesse.
Read more about Shakuntala Devi.
Conclusion
All these women have paved the way for female education all over the world. They have inspired us through their grit and wisdom to make the best possible contribution to society. We, at Cuemath, firmly believe in women empowerment and are striving hard to harness the female power of our society. We are helping women in all spheres of life to restart their teaching careers in India.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Women in Mathematics
Who is the Princess of mathematics?
Sophie Germain earned her claim to immortality through her work in two distinct branches of mathematics. She lovingly carved her name in the annals of number theory, the purest branch, which was called the queen of mathematics by Gauss, the prince of mathematics himself.
Who is the best mathematician in the world 2020?
Stanford mathematics professor Yakov “Yasha” Eliashberg has been jointly awarded the 2020 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his contributions to differential geometry and topology.