The History of Female Mathematicians

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The History of Female Mathematicians

• Mandi Tuite
• MTH 4960
• Sister Kathleen

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Females in Mathematics

• Mathematics as a field of study had been out of
  reach for many women before the twentieth
  century. However, from ancient times through the
  nineteenth century and into the early twentieth
  century, a few women have achieved notably in
  mathematics.
• I will share with you the history of female
  mathematicians and how its change.
• I will share with you the most impressionable
  female mathematicians and the most impressionable
  female mathematician of our times.
• I will share with you where female mathematicians
  are headed.

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A Brief History

• The Scientific/Mathematics Revolution of the 16th
  and 17th centuries, saw a large increase of women
  into the field of mathematics. However, women
  were not permitted to attend from universities.
  To follow their mathematical interests, women
  were forced to receive an informal education.
  European noblemen were free to pursue an interest
  in science as a hobby the door was also open to
  noblewomen, who could take part in the informal
  scientific networks of their fathers and
  brothers.
• Overall, the Scientific Revolution did little to
  change people's ideas about the nature of women.
  Male scientists/mathematicians used the new
  science to spread a view that women were by
  nature inferior to men and should play a domestic
  role as nurturing mothers.
• In the early 19th century, a few women made
  scientific/mathematical contributions that were
  recognized. In the later 19th century the rise of
  the women's colleges provided jobs for women
  scientists, mathematicians, and opportunities for
  education. Women's colleges produced an
  unbalanced number of women who went on for Ph.D.s
  in science an math.
• In the 19th century Grace Hopper, a
  mathematician, became one of the first computer
  programmers for the Mark I computer. Mina Spiegel
  Rees, also a mathematician, was the chief
  technical aide for the Applied Mathematics Panel
  of the National Defense Research Committee. These
  two sparked a change for the history of female
  mathematicians.

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Impressionable Female Mathematicians
Sophie Germain

• born April 1, 1776 and died June 27,
  1831. Was a mathematician, number theorist, and
  mathematical physicist.
• Sophie was inspired to study math after she
  heard the story of Archimedes of Syracuse who was
  reading geometry as he was killed it was after
  this telling that she decided to commit her life
  to an area of study that could draw her attention
  so closely.
• After following her passion for geometry, Sophie
  taught herself other areas of mathematics, and
  also learned Latin and Greek so that she could
  read the classical mathematics texts. Her parents
  were against her study of mathematics and tried
  to stop it but, she found away to hide it from
  them and she began studying at night.
• Using the alias "M. le Blanc Sophie received
  copies of mathematical lecture materials and math
  problems from the French Universities during the
  eighteenth century to pursue her passion at a
  higher level.
• During the early eighteen hundreds she worked
  for years under this alias. She had many
  published works and in 1816 she received an award
  from the French Academy of Sciences for paper
  written about her studies on number
  theory,Chladni figures, and patterns produced by
  vibration. She didnt attend this ceremony for
  fear that she would be caught for being a female
  mathematician.
• This paper and her work laid the building blocks
  for the creation or building of todays
  skyscrapers.
• Sophie made partial progress on a proof of
  Fermat's Last Theorem. Her progress was related
  to prime exponents less than 100, she showed
  there could be no solutions relatively prime to
  the exponent. After this work she was recognized
  by the French schools of science, where she
  worked on her own until dying of breast cancer.
  In honor of her some primes have nicknamed
  Sophie Germain Primes.

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Impressionable Female Mathematicians

• born on
  December 10, 1815 and died on November 27, 1852,
  was known as a mathematician and a computer
  pioneer. The daughter of the great poet Lord
  Byron.
• After losing her father at a very young age of
  eight Ada Lovelace's mother, who had studied
  mathematics herself, decided that her daughter
  would follow in her footsteps rather than her
  father's, by studying more logical subjects like
  math and science, rather than literature and
  poetry. At a very young age it was apparent that
  she was a mathematical genius and passionate
  about her studies.
• In 1833 Ada Lovelace met Charles Babbage and
  became interested in a model he had constructed
  of a mechanical device to compute values of
  quadratic functions, the Difference Engine. She
  also studied his ideas on another machine, the
  Analytical Engine, which would use punched cards
  to "read" instructions and data for solving
  mathematical problems.
• She used these engines to calculate Bernoulli
  numbers. She later published the translation and
  notes under the initials "A.A.L," to hide her
  identity as many women during this time period
  did in order to be published.
• After battling her own personal demons and dying
  of uterine cancer she was laid to rest by her
  father and in 1980 the U.S. Department of Defense
  settled on the name "ADA" for a new standardized
  computer language, named in honor of Ada
  Lovelace.

Ada Lovelace
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Impressionable Female Mathematicians

• born March 23, 1882 died
  April 14, 1935 as a mathematician.
• Born to a father that was a notable Mathematics
  professor at Erlangen University in Germany, Emmy
  Noether studied arithmetic and languages but was
  not permitted as a girl to enroll in the college
  mathematics program. Instead she attended the
  University and became a French and English
  teacher.
• After many years Emmy returned to school in 1904,
  when the University of Erlangen decided to allow
  women to enroll as regular students.  During her
  studies she wrote her dissertation in algebraic
  math earning her a doctorate summa cum laude in
  1908.
• After receiving this honor and completing her
  education for seven years, Noether worked at the
  University of Erlangen without any salary,
  sometimes acting as a substitute lecturer for her
  father when he was ill.
• In 1815, at the Mathematical Institute in
  Göttingen she pursued her important mathematical
  work that proved key parts of the general theory
  of relativity. During all of her time teaching at
  the Universities she was never paid nor did she
  receive payment for her research until 1919 when
  she could receive payment from the students and
  not from the University it wasnt until 1922 that
  the University signed her as an adjunct faculty
  and paid her a small salary.

Emmy Noether
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Emmy Noether Cont.

• A well known and like Professor among the
  University Emmy was invited based on her work in
  the 1920s on ring theory and ideals was
  foundational in abstract algebra to receive
  recognition and to work as a visiting professor
  in 1928-1929 to the University of Moscow and in
  1930 to the University of Frankfurt.
• In 1934, she moved to America where she worked at
  Rockefeller Foundation as a full-time paid
  professor. Unfortunately shortly after this move
  she died of complications related to a uterine
  tumor.
• After World War II ended, the University of
  Erlangen honored her memory, and in that city a
  coed gymnasium specializing in math was named for
  her.
• A quote by Emmy Noether
• If one proves the equality of two numbers a and b
  by showing first that "a is less than or equal to
  b" and then "a is greater than or equal to b", it
  is unfair, one should instead show that they are
  really equal by disclosing the inner ground for
  their equality.
• Called by Albert Einstein "the most significant
  creative mathematical genius thus far produced
  since the higher education of women began,"

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• Although many of the eighteenth century woman
  mathematicians paved the way for the twentieth
  century woman mathematicians, there still is work
  to be done.

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Impressionable Female Mathematicians of our Time

• Born August 9, 1940 in New York City, New York,
  USA and still currently living she has done much
  for the twenty first century as she has carried
  on the Emmy Noethers footsteps.
• ... not only was mathematics fascinating, but it
  seemed as far away from English as I could get.
• Her research involved studying the interplay
  between the analytic and geometric aspects of
  classifying Riemann surfaces. This was something
  Emmy Noether was interested in and Linda decided
  to study further.
• In the early 1960s, Bers and Ahlfors showed that
  the space of conformal structures on a given
  Riemann surface can be modelled on a Banach space
  with a real analytic structure. Keen defined the
  set of parameters for this space in terms of the
  hyperbolic structure of a given surface
  determined by the conformal structure.
• During 1992-1995, she was honored by being
  elected to serve as Vice-President of the
  American Mathematical Society. She chaired the
  Committee on Professional Ethics which sought to
  draw up guidelines for professional
  mathematicians on issues such as giving credit to
  others for their contributions, responsible
  refereeing of papers, and important issues
  involving interactions between mathematicians and
  governments, and mathematicians and industry.

Linda Goldway Keen
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Impressionable Female Mathematicians of our Time
Lenore Blum

• Born in 1943 in New York, USA Blum had no
  intentions of becoming a mathematician until she
  was inspired by her husband, a well known
  mathematics professor. It was he who opened her
  mathematics career and inspired her to inspire
  women of our times to become mathematicians.
• Over many years Blum has championed increased
  participation of women and girls in mathematics
  and has been actively engaged in promoting this
  cause through different organizations. In 1975
  she became President of the Association for Women
  in Mathematics, an organization she which had
  helped to found. Also in 1975 she became
  co-director of the Math/Science Network which
  organized "Expanding Your Horizons" conferences
  for girls attending high school.
• She published jointly with her husband Manuel
  Blum, Towards a Mathematical Theory of Inductive
  Inference, Information and Control. This piece of
  work studies the mathematical model of inductive
  inference introduced by E M Gold in 1967. An
  inductive inference machine produces, from any
  enumeration of a partial function, a certain
  output sequence of numbers. After defining when
  such a machine is reliable on a set of partial
  functions they characterize the sets of functions
  that can be identified by machines which are
  reliable on all partial functions.

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Lenore Blum Cont.

• Not only has Blum published many other works and
  served on many boards she has begun to pave the
  way for new ideas and machines related to
  computation. She is important to us because of
  her continuous drive to increase women in the
  mathematics field and her hard work to prove that
  women have a place in mathematics.
• A quote from her most recent book on computation
  We've developed a parallel theory ... of
  computation that deals with the real, physical
  world. Continuity is the mathematics of calculus
  and physics but there's never been a theory of
  computation that deals with this continuum.
  That's what we've developed.

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An Awesome Webquest

• Women in Mathematics An Internet WebQuest on
  Women in Mathematics
• created by Barbara WymerMar Vista High School
• edited by Marybeth Castraberti 2004
• This webquest was designed to help students
  become familiar with the general history of
  mathematics and then how women have been effected
  by the mathematics world.
• Students explore many resource and learn a lot
  about the impressionable female mathematicians of
  the past and present.
• http//www.masconomet.org/teachers/cmonaco/Women
  in Mathematics.htm

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Personal Thought

• As I have spent my time studying the history of
  mathematics, I have come to notice that the
  individuals mentioned in the history books are
  predominantly of the male gender. Women have
  certainly contributed to the development of the
  field of mathematics, but their contributions, at
  least until the 20th century, have not been
  noted. As we enter the 21st century, it is
  important to heighten our awareness of this
  social condition as we continue to encourage
  people of both genders to study and make advances
  in the field of mathematics.

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Resources

• Armstrong, Jane M. Achievement and participation
  of women in mathematics an overview, Education
  Commission of the State, Denver, Colorado, 1980.
• Avelsgaard, Carol. "Women in Mathematics The
  Silent Minority," The Mathematical Intelligencer,
  10(4) 1988, 32-34.
• Bernstein, Dorothy. "Women Mathematicians before
  1950," AWM Newsletter, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1979),
  9-11. Reprint in Complexities Women in
  Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case and Anne Leggett,
  Editors, Princeton University Press (2005),
  204-205.
• Cooney, Miriam (editor). Celebrating Women in
  Mathematics and Science, National Council of
  Teachers of Mathematics, 1996,
• Cooledge, J.L. "Six female mathematicians,"
  Scripta Mathematica 21 (1951), 20ff.
• Cooney, Sister Miriam. Celebrating Women in
  Mathematics and Science, National Council of
  Teachers of Mathematics, 1996.