Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya to be featured on International Day of Women and Girls in Science
The Science Museum of the University of Navarra highlights in a video the talent of the Russian scientist who became one of the first female professors in Europe.
10 | 02 | 2022
Sofia Kovalevskaya was a Russian scientist who had to overcome barriers of discrimination against women in both the academic and scientific world and, thanks to her talent and tenacity, was one of the first women to obtain a doctorate and be appointed professor at a European university.
On the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Science Museum of the University of Navarra has launched a new video of the series "Women in Science", to highlight the career of this scientist unknown to the general public. Kovalevskaya joins the list of women highlighted in this outreach initiative in which Janaki Ammal, Lynn Margulis, Mary Anning, Gerty Cori, Margarita Salas, Cecilia Payne, among many others, have already been protagonists.
Sofia Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow in 1850 into a noble and wealthy family. Her enthusiasm for science came early thanks to her uncle Fyodor Schubert. In addition, Sofia's father supported her education in mathematics from an early age, and she received private lessons from Alexander Nicolaievich Strannoliubskii.
Kovalevskaya married Vladimir Kovalevskij at the age of 18 for convenience in order to continue her education - at that time in Russia women were not allowed to attend university and the only way to travel outside the country was by parental or spousal consent.
In 1870 she traveled to Berlin to work with Karl Weierstrass, considered the father of modern analysis. This scientist was reluctant to tutor women and tested Sofia on a series of mathematical problems, convinced that she would be unable to solve them. When Sofia handed the solutions to Weierstrass, he was so impressed that he agreed to give her free private lessons - the University of Berlin did not allow women in the classrooms either. Weierstrass himself supervised Sophia's doctoral thesis, which she was able to obtain, after overcoming many obstacles, at the University of Göttingen in 1874. She was one of the first women to obtain a university doctorate.
In 1884 mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler secured a position for Sophia as a lecturer at Stockholm University, a one-year, unpaid job. Students paid Sophia directly for her lectures. During these years Kovalevskaya devoted herself to the mathematical description of the rotational motion of a body around a fixed point, similar to that of a spinning top. The precise mathematical description of this type of motion involves a complex system of differential equations of extraordinary complexity. At that time only two cases were known in which these equations had been solved thanks to the work of two important mathematicians: Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) and Joseph-Louise Lagrange (1736-1813). In 1888, the "Kovalevskaya spinning top" was added to Euler's and Lagrange's equations, for which Sophia received the Bordin Prize in mathematics awarded by the Paris Academy of Sciences. Six months later, in May 1889, she was appointed professor for life at the University of Stockholm, where she continued to work until her death in 1891, at the age of 41.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation currently awards the Sofja Kovalevskaja Prize and grants up to 1.65 million euros per project in any area of scientific research to enable talented young researchers to build and lead research teams in Germany.