Sofya Kovalevskaya

Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (), born Sofya Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya ( – 10 February 1891), was a Russian mathematician who contributed to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world – the first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor.
Early Life

Sofya Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya) was born in Moscow, the second of three children. Her father, Lieutenant General , served in the Imperial Russian Army as head of the Moscow Artillery before retiring to Polibino, his family estate in Pskov Oblast in 1858, when Kovalevskaya was eight years old. He was a member of the minor Russian nobility, of mixed Belarussian–Polish descent (Polish on his father's side), with possible partial ancestry from the royal Corvin family of Hungary, and served as Marshall of Nobility for Vitebsk province. (There may also have been some Romani ancestry on the father's side.)

Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna von Schubert (1820–1879), came from a family of German immigrants to St. Petersburg. They lived on Vasilievsky Island. Her maternal great-grandfather was the astronomer and geographer Friedrich Theodor von Schubert (1758–1825), who emigrated to Russia from Germany around 1785. Schubert became a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science and head of its astronomical observatory. His son, Kovalevskaya's maternal grandfather, was General Theodor Friedrich von Schubert (1789–1865), who lead the military topographic service, and was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as Director of the Kunstkamera museum.

Kovalevskaya's parents gave her a good early education.  At various times, her governesses were native speakers of English, French, and German. When she was 11 years old, she was interested by a forecast of what she would learn later in her lessons in calculus; the wall of her room had been covered with pages from lecture notes by Ostrogradsky, left over from her father's student days. She was tutored privately in elementary mathematics by Iosif Ignatevich Malevich.

The physicist Nikolai Nikanorovich Tyrtov noted her unusual aptitude when she managed to understand his textbook by discovering for herself an approximate construction of trigonometric functions which she had not yet seen in her studies.F. V. Korvin-Krukovskii, "Sofia Vasilevna Korvin-Krukovskaia," Russkaia Starina, vol. 71, no. 9 (1891), p. 623-636. Tyrtov called her a "new Pascal" and suggested she be given a chance to undergo further studies under the tutelage of .Rappaport, Karen D. "S. Kovalevsky: A Mathematical Lesson." The American Mathematical Monthly 88 (October 1981): 564–573. In 1866–67 she spent much of the winter with her family in St. Petersburg, where she was given private tutoring by Strannoliubskii, a well-known supporter of higher education for women, who taught her calculus. During that same period, the son of a local priest introduced her sister Anna to progressive ideas influenced by the radical movement of the 1860s, providing her with copies of radical journals of the time discussing Russian nihilism.Sofya Kovalevskaya, A Russian Childhood, translated, edited, and introduced by Beatrice Stillman; with an analysis of Kovalevskaya's Mathematics by P. Y. Kochina. Springer-Verlag, c1978 

While the word nihilist (нигилист) often was used in a negative sense, it did not have that meaning for the young Russians of the 1860s (шестидесятники):

Despite her obvious talent for mathematics, she could not complete her education in Russia. At that time, women were not allowed to attend universities in Russia and most other countries.  In order to study abroad, Kovalevskaya needed written permission from her father (or husband). Accordingly, in 1868 she contracted a "fictitious marriage" with Vladimir Kovalevskij, a young paleontology student, book publisher and radical, who was the first to translate and publish the works of Charles Darwin in Russia. They moved from Russia to Germany in 1869, after a brief stay in Vienna, in order to pursue advanced studies.Roger Cooke, The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya, Springer-Verlag, 1984.

Notes

Further reading

 Cooke, Roger (1984).The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya (Springer-Verlag) 
 Kennedy, Don H. (1983). Little Sparrow, a Portrait of Sofia Kovalevsky. Athens: Ohio University Press. 
 Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1993). A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia -- Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary. Lives of women in science, 99-2518221-2 (2., revised ed.). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. P. 
 Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1987). Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia in 
 The Legacy of Sonya Kovalevskaya: proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, held October 25–28, 1985. Contemporary mathematics, 0271-4132 ; 64. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. 1987. 

Other websites

 "Sofia Kovalevskaya", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College

 Women's History - Sofia Kovalevskaya 
 Brief biography of Sofia Kovalevskaya by Yuriy Belits. University of Colorado at Denver, March 17, 2005.
 Biography (in Russian)
 Association for Women in Mathematics 

 Sof'i Kovalevskoy street, Saint Petersburg (OpenStreetMap)
 Sof'i Kovalevskoy street, Moscow (OpenStreetMap)

Related pages
 Timeline of women in mathematics

Category:1850 births
Category:1891 deaths
Category:Scientists from Moscow
Category:Russian mathematicians