Sofia Kovalevskaya
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (Софья 'асильевна Ковалевская) (also known as Sonia Kovalevsky) (
January 15,
1850 –
February 10,
1891) was the first major
Russian female
mathematician and a student of
Karl Weierstrass in
Berlin. In
1884, she was appointed professor at
Stockholm University, the third woman in
Europe to become a
professor.
Kovalevskaya was born in
Moscow,
Russia. Her father was Vasily Vasilievich Krukovsky (1800-1874), an artillery officer, later general, of
Polish descent. Krukovsky was a distant descendant of the Hungarian king
Matthias Corvinus; in
1858 the Russian authorities confirmed his noble status, and Krukovsky was permitted to change his surname to Korvin-Krukovsky, in other words, to add "Korvin" (the Krukowski's coats-of-arms) to his family name. "Korvin" comes from "Corvus" (Latin "crow"), and the Polish name "Krukovsky" comes from "kruk" (Polish "crow"), too.
Her mother was Elizaveta Fyodorovna Schubert (1820-1879), a German. She was granddaughter of Theodor Schubert aka Fyodor Ivanovich Schubert (
mathematician and
astronomer of the
St Petersburg Academy of Sciences) via Fyodor Fyodorovich Schubert (another Academician) and had more education and "appreciation of the finer things" than her husband.
As Vasily Vasilievich Krukovsky had a Polish father, and a Russian mother, Kovalevskaya was only a quarter-Russian by descent. She had great appreciation for the Polish revolutionary movement of the 19th century.
There seem to have been several roots to Sofia's mathematical bent. Some came from her father, accidentally; he had studied
calculus in the army, and when they ran short of proper wallpaper for one house, he used lithographed notes from lectures by
Ostrogradsky instead. Sofia spent many hours of childhood scrutinising the strange scribbles. Something of it seems to have stuck for when she later took calculus it came to her very quickly, as if it had always been there.
She adored her uncle
Pyotr Vasilievich Krukovsky, a self-taught eccentric with especial fondness for mathematics.
While reading a book on
optics given to her by a family friend, she came across
trigonometric concepts unfamiliar to her at the time, which she tried to explain on her own. She explained it in the same manner it was explained historically, and the friend was so impressed he implored Sophia's father to let her take private mathematical study, calling her "a new
Pascal" in the process.
Kovalevskaya had a crush on
Fyodor Dostoevsky and practiced his favourite piano work,
Beethoven's
Pathetique Sonata, to get his attention, but he was focused on the older sister Anna and he very probably proposed to her.
In
1874, in her absence,
University of Goettingen with support of Karl Weierstrass, granted Kovalevskaya
PhD in Mathematics and
Master of Fine Arts degrees
summa cum laude for the cycle of three papers, which included important results on the theory of partial differential equation and its applications to the study of the shape of
rings of Saturn. In the same year she returned to
Russia, but failed to get a job at the
St Petersburg University. After that Kovalevskaya stopped her scientific work for six years in favor of the literary one.
In
1880, Kovalevskaya moved to
Moscow but was not allowed to take an examination for the Master degree in the university. A year later she left Moscow for
Berlin and
Paris, trying to get a professor's job there.
She also essentially completed the study of
rotating solids, applying the then-new theory of
Abelian functions (and thus "justifying" the enormous effort that was put into the theory). For this study, namely for the paper
On the Rotation of a Solid Body about a Fixed Point, Kovalevskaya was awarded a special prize by the
Paris Academy of Science in
1888. In the next year she was awarded the prize of
Swedish Academy of Science for her second work on this subject.
As late as in
1889, she became the first female Correspondent Member of
St. Petersburg Academy of Science, being elected there on the initiative of
Pafnuty Chebyshev among others.
Kovalevskaya died of
influenza, complicated by
pneumonia, in
Stockholm and is interred there in the
Norra begravningsplatsen.
There were two biographical movies released about her in the
USSR in
1956 and in
1985.
Some of her scientific works include:
*Acta Mathematica (1885)
*Mémoire sur un cas particulier du problème de le rotation d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, ou l'intégration s'effectue à l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du temps (1886)
*The short article Sur un théorème de M. Bruns (1891)
Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day and the Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture are annual events sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), the largest organization of women mathematicians in the United States. The lectureship named for Kovalevsky is an honor awarded to a prominent woman in mathematics, science, or engineering; the lecture is usually given at the national meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Past honorees have included Daubechies (2005), McLaughlin (2004), and Petzold (2003). The high school program named for Kovalevsky is now a grant-making intitiative of the AWM, funding workshops around the country that invite girls to explore mathematics.
*
Cauchy-Kovalevskaya theorem*
Roger Cooke:
The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya (Springer-Verlag, 1984)
*Sofya Kovalevskaya:
A Russian Childhood (Springer-Verlag, 1978; translated and introduced by
Beatrice Stillman)
*Ann Hibner Koblitz:
A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia -- Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Rutgers University Press, 1983)
*
*
Women's History - Sofia Kovalevskaya*
Biography (in Russian)*
Association for Women in Mathematics{{Persondata
NAME=Kovalevskaya, Sofia Vasilyevna | ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Ковалевская, Софья 'асильевна (Russian) | SHORT DESCRIPTION=First major Russian female mathematician | DATE OF BIRTH=January 15, 1850 | PLACE OF BIRTH=Moscow, Russia | DATE OF DEATH=February 10, 1891 | PLACE OF DEATH=Stockholm, Sweden
|
