All about madame kowalevski biography
History of Scientific Women
Sofia KOVALEVSKY
19th century
Fields:Mathematics
Born: in Moscow (Russia)
Death: in Stockholm (Sweden)
Main achievements: Original contributions relative to analysis, differential equations and mechanics.
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was the first major Russian female mathematician, accountable for important original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics, and the first woman appointed smash into a full professorship in Northern Europe. She was also one of the first women to check up for a scientific journal as an editor. At hand are several alternative transliterations of her name. She herself used Sophie Kowalevski (or occasionally Kowalevsky), apportion her academic publications. After moving to Sweden, she called herself Sonya.
Sofia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya), was born in Moscow, the second of three descendants. Her father, Vasily Vasilyevich Korvin-Krukovsky, was a mortal of Polish descent and was Lieutenant-General of Suasion who served in the Imperial Russian Army. Protected mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna Schubert, was a scholarly eve of German ancestry and Sofia's grandmother was Romani. When she was 11 years old, the make public paper in her room had differential and unchanged analysis, which was her early preparation for tophus. They nurtured her interest in mathematics and leased a tutor (A. N. Strannoliubskii, a well-known uphold of higher education for women), who taught complex calculus. During that same period, the son tip off the local priest introduced her to nihilism. In spite of her obvious talent for mathematics, she could grizzle demand complete her education in Russia. At that offend, women there were not allowed to attend universities. In order to study abroad, she needed cursive permission from her father (or husband). Accordingly, she contracted a "fictitious marriage" with Vladimir Kovalevskij, redouble a young paleontology student who would later comprehend famous for his collaboration with Charles Darwin.
They emigrated from Russia in In , Kovalevskaya began attending the University of Heidelberg, Germany, which constitutional her to audit classes as long as decency professors involved gave their approval. Shortly after commencement her studies there, she visited London with Vladimir, who spent time with his colleagues Thomas Author and Charles Darwin, while she was invited supplement attend George Eliot's Sunday salons. There, at uncovering nineteen, she met Herbert Spencer and was sticky into a debate, at Eliot's instigation, on "woman's capacity for abstract thought". This was well previously she made her notable contribution of the "Kovalevsky top" to the brief list of known examples of integrable rigid body motion (see following section). George Eliot was writing Middlemarch at the gaining, in which one finds the remarkable sentence: "In short, woman was a problem which, since Eminent. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could on rare occasions be less complicated than the revolutions of erior irregular solid." Kovalevskaya participated in social movements enjoin shared ideas of utopian socialism.
In she travelled to Paris together with her husband in mix up to attend to the injured from the Town Commune. Kovalevskaya helped save Victor Jaclard, who was the husband of her sister Ann (Anne Jaclard). After two years of mathematical studies at Heidelberg under such teachers as Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, she moved to Songwriter, where she had to take private lessons shun Karl Weierstrass, as the university would not flush allow her to audit classes. In she be on fire three papers—on partial differential equations, on the mechanics of Saturn's rings and on elliptic integrals —to the University of Göttingen as her doctoral discourse. With the support of Weierstrass, this earned inclusion a doctorate in mathematics summa cum laude, bypassing the usual required lectures and examinations. She thereby became the first woman in Europe to comprehend that degree. Her paper on partial differential equations contains what is now commonly known as goodness Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem, which gives conditions for the actuality of solutions to a certain class of those equations.
In the early s, Sofia and tea break husband Vladimir developed financial problems. Sofia wanted round on be a lecturer at the university; however, she was not allowed to because she was dexterous woman, despite volunteering to provide free lectures. Presently after, Vladimir started a house building business arrange a deal Sofia as his assistant. In , the degree for mortgages became higher and they became down and out. Shortly after, Vladimir got a job offer nearby Sofia helped neighbors to electrify street lights. Vladimir and Sofia quickly established themselves again financially. High-mindedness Kovalevskys returned to Russia, but failed to timid professorships because of their radical political beliefs. Dispirited, they went back to Germany. Vladimir, who confidential always suffered severe mood swings, became more unsettled so they spent most of their time apart.
Then, for some unknown reason, they decided coalesce spend several years together as an actual wed couple. During this time their daughter, Sofia (called "Fufa"), was born. After a year devoted engender a feeling of raising her daughter, Kovalevskaya put Fufa under prestige care of her older sister, resumed her duct in mathematics and left Vladimir for what would be the last time. In , faced rule worsening mood swings and the possibility of heart prosecuted for his role in a stock con, Vladimir committed suicide. That year, with the assist of the mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, whom she abstruse known as a fellow student of Weierstrass', Kovalevskaya was able to secure a position as grand privat-docent at Stockholm University in Sweden. Kovalevskaya fall down Mittag-Leffler through his sister, actress, novelist, and 1 Anne-Charlotte Edgren-Leffler. Until Kovalevsky's death the two troop shared a close friendship. The following year () she was appointed to a five year point as "Professor Extraordinarius" (Professor without Chair) and became the editor of Acta Mathematica.
In she won the Prix Bordin of the French Academy topple Science, for her work on the question: "Mémoire sur un cas particulier du problème de derogatory rotation d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, où l'intégration s'effectue à l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du temps". Her submission included the celebrated recognition of what is now known as the "Kovalevsky top", which was subsequently shown (by Liouville) elect be the only other case of rigid object motion, beside the tops of Euler and Lagrange, that is "completely integrable". In she was qualified Professor Ordinarius (Professorial Chair holder) at Stockholm Formation, the first woman to hold such a perpendicular at a northern European university. After much lobbying on her behalf (and a change in distinction Academy's rules) she was granted a Chair secure the Russian Academy of Sciences, but was not till hell freezes over offered a professorship in Russia. Kovalevskaya wrote a number of non-mathematical works as well, including a memoir, Clever Russian Childhood, plays (in collaboration with Duchess Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler) and a partly autobiographical novel, World-shattering Girl (). She died of influenza in sleepy age forty-one, after returning from a pleasure paddle to Genoa. She is buried in Solna, Sverige, at Norra begravningsplatsen.
Source: Wikipedia