Timeline of women in mathematics

This article is a timeline of **women in mathematics**.

## Timeline

350–370 until 415: The lifetime of Hypatia, a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher from Alexandria, Egypt, who was the first well-documented woman in mathematics. She was head of the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria from the year 400. Her students were young men from around the empire.

1678: Elena Cornaro Piscopia from Venice became one of the first women to get an academic degree from a university, and was the first woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree. She went on to become a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Padua.

### 19th Century

1827: The theorem of French mathematician Sophie Germain, known as Germain's Theorem, was published in a footnote of a book by the mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre. In this theorem Germain proved that if _x_, _y_, and _z_ are integers and if _x_<sup>5</sup> + _y_<sup>5</sup> = _z_<sup>5</sup> then either _x_, _y_, or _z_ must be divisible by 5. Germain's theorem was a major step toward proving Fermat's last theorem for the case where n equals 5.

1829: The first public examination of an American girl in geometry was held.

1874: Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya became the first woman in modern Europe to gain a doctorate in mathematics, which she earned from the University of Göttingen in Germany.

1888: The Kovalevskaya top, one of a brief list of known examples of integrable rigid body motion, was discovered by Sofya Kovalevskaya.

1889: Sofya Kovalevskaya was appointed as the first female professor in Northern Europe, at the Stockholm University.

### 20th Century

1918: German mathematician Emmy Noether published Noether's (first) theorem.

1927: American mathematician Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler became the first woman to present a lecture at the American Mathematical Society Colloquium.

1930: Cecilia Krieger became the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics in Canada, at the University of Toronto.

1956: American mathematician Gladys West began collecting data from satellites at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. Her calculations directly impacted the development of accurate GPS systems.

1960 and 1966: Lucy Joan Slater published two books about mathematical functions from the Cambridge University Press, one of the world's largest academic publishers.

#### 1980s

1983: Julia Robinson became the first female president of the American Mathematical Society.

#### 1990s

1995: American mathematician Margaret H. Wright became the first female president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

1998: Melanie Wood became the first female American to make the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad Team. She won silver medals in the 1998 and 1999 International Mathematical Olympiads.

#### 2000s

2004: American Alison Miller became the first ever female gold medal winner on the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad Team.

#### 2010s

2016: The London Mathematical Society's Women in Mathematics Committee was awarded the Royal Society's inaugural Athena Prize.

2019: American mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck became the first woman to win the Abel Prize."

## Related pages

- Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States