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Sofia Kovalevskaya
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Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna Shubert (Schubert), descended from a family of German immigrants to St.
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Petersburg who lived on Vasilievsky island. Her maternal great grandfather was the astronomer and geographer
Friedrich Theodor Schubert (17581825), who emigrated to Russia from Germany around 1785. He became a
full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science and head of its astronomical observatory. His son,
Sophie's maternal grandfather, was General Theodor Friedrich von Schubert (Shubert) [17891865), who was
head of the military topographic service, and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well
as Director of the Kunstkamera museum.
Her parents provided her with a good early education through a private Polish tutor Y.I. Malevich. When she
was 11 years old, she was intrigued by an unusual premonition of what she was to learn later in her lessons in
calculus; the wall of her room had been papered with pages from lecture notes by Ostrogradsky, left over from
her father's student days.[3] After she displayed an unusual, original flair for mathematics, she was provided
with a tutor in St. Petersburg (A. N. Strannoliubskii, a well-known advocate of higher education for women),
who taught her calculus. During that same period, the son of the local priest introduced her sister Anna to
progressive ideas influenced by the "Movement of the 1860's", providing her with copies of radical journals of
the time discussing nihilism.[4]
Despite her obvious talent for mathematics, she could not complete her education in Russia. At that time,
women there were not allowed to attend universities. In order to study abroad, she needed written permission
from her father (or husband). Accordingly, she contracted a "fictitious marriage" with Vladimir Kovalevskij,
then a young paleontology student who would later become famous for his collaboration with Charles Darwin.
They emigrated from Russia in 1867.[5]
Student years
In 1869, Kovalevskaya began attending the University of Heidelberg, Germany, which allowed her to audit
classes as long as the professors involved gave their approval.
Shortly after beginning her studies there, she visited London with Vladimir, who spent time with his colleagues
Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin, while she was invited to attend George Eliot's Sunday salons.[5] There, at
age nineteen, she met Herbert Spencer and was led into a debate, at Eliot's instigation, on "woman's capacity for
abstract thought". This was well before she made her notable contribution of the "Kovalevskaya top" to the brief
list of known examples of integrable rigid body motion (see following section). George Eliot was writing
Middlemarch at the time, in which one finds the remarkable sentence: "In short, a woman was a problem which,
since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could hardly be less complicated than the revolutions of an
irregular solid."[6] Kovalevskaya participated in social movements and shared ideas of utopian socialism. In
1871 she traveled to Paris together with her husband in order to attend to the injured from the Paris 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 Berlin, where she took private lessons with Karl Weierstrass, as the
university would not even allow her to audit classes. In 1874 she presented three paperson partial differential
equations, on the dynamics of Saturn's rings and on elliptic integralsto the University of Gttingen as her
doctoral dissertation. With the support of Weierstrass, this earned her a doctorate in mathematics summa cum
laude, bypassing the usual required lectures and examinations.[5]
She thereby became the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her paper on partial differential equations
contains what is now commonly known as the CauchyKovalevskaya theorem, which gives conditions for the
existence of solutions to a certain class of those equations.
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That year, with the help of the mathematician Gsta Mittag-Leffler, whom she had known as a fellow student of
Weierstrass', Kovalevskaya was able to secure a position as a privat-docent at Stockholm University in
Sweden.[5] Kovalevskaya met Mittag-Leffler through his sister, actress, novelist, and playwright Anne Charlotte
Edgren-Leffler. Until Kovalevskaya's death the two women shared a close friendship that was interpreted by
some authors as a possibly romantic or even sexual relationship.[8]
The following year (1884) she was appointed to a five-year position as "Professor Extraordinarius" (Professor
without Chair) and became the editor of Acta Mathematica. In 1888 she won the Prix Bordin of the French
Academy of Science, for her work on the question: "Mmoire sur un cas particulier du problme de le rotation
d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, o l'intgration s'effectue l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du
temps".[5] Her submission included the celebrated discovery of what is now known as the "Kovalevskaya Top",
which was subsequently shown to be the only other case of rigid body motion, beside the tops of Euler and
Lagrange, that is "completely integrable".[9]
In 1889 she was appointed Professor Ordinarius (Professorial Chair holder) at Stockholm University, the first
woman to hold such a position at a northern European university. After much lobbying on her behalf (and a
change in the Academy's rules) she was granted a Chair in the Russian Academy of Sciences but was never
offered a professorship in Russia.
Kovalevskaya wrote several non-mathematical works as well, including a memoir, A Russian Childhood, plays
(in collaboration with Duchess Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler) and a partly autobiographical novel, Nihilist
Girl (1890).
She died of influenza in 1891 at age forty-one, after returning from a vacation to Genoa. She is buried in Solna,
Sweden, at Norra begravningsplatsen.
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Tributes
Sonya Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day is a
grant-making program of the Association for Women in
Mathematics (AWM), funding workshops across the
United States which encourage girls to explore
mathematics.
The Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation of Germany bestows a bi-annual Sofia Kovalevskaya Award to
promising young researchers.
In film
Sofia Kovalevskaya has been the subject of three film and TV biographies.
Sofya Kovalevskaya (1956) directed by Iosef Shapiro, starring Yelena Yunger, Lev Kosolov and Tatyana
Sezenyevskaya.[10]
Berget P Mnens Baksida ("A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon") (1983) directed by Lennart
Hjulstrm, starring Gunilla Nyroos as Sofja Kovalewsky and Bibi Andersson as Anne Charlotte Edgren-
Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, and sister to Gsta Mittag-Leffler.[11]
Sofya Kovalevskaya (1985 TV) directed by Azerbaijani director Ayan Shakhmaliyeva, starring Yelena
Safonova as Sofia.[12]
In fiction
"Little Sparrow: A Portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky" (1983), Don H. Kennedy, Ohio University Press,
Athens, Ohio
"Beyond the Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya" (2002), a biographical novel by mathematician
and educator Joan Spicci, published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is an historically accurate portrayal
of her early married years and quest for an education. It is based in part on 88 of Sofia's letters, which the
author translated from Russian to English.
Against the Day, a 2006 novel by Thomas Pynchon was speculated before release to be based on the life
of Sofia, but in the finished novel she appears as a minor character.
"Too Much Happiness" (2009), short story by Alice Munro, published in the August 2009 issue of
Harper's Magazine features Sofia as a main character. It was later published in a collection of the same
name.
See Also
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CauchyKowalevski theorem
Kowalevski top
Selected publications
Kowalevski, Sophie (1875), "Zur Theorie der partiellen Differentialgleichung", Journal fr die reine und
angewandte Mathematik, 80: 132 (The surname given in the paper is "von Kowalevsky".)
Kowalevski, Sophie (1884), "ber die Reduction einer bestimmten Klasse Abel'scher Integrale 3ten
Ranges auf elliptische Integrale", Acta Mathematica, 4 (1): 393414, doi:10.1007/BF02418424
Kowalevski, Sophie (1885), "ber die Brechung des Lichtes In Cristallinischen Mitteln", Acta
Mathematica, 6 (1): 249304, doi:10.1007/BF02400418
Kowalevski, Sophie (1889), "Sur le probleme de la rotation d'un corps solide autour d'un point fixe", Acta
Mathematica, 12 (1): 177232, doi:10.1007/BF02592182
Kowalevski, Sophie (1890), "Sur une proprit du systme d'quations diffrentielles qui dfinit la
rotation d'un corps solide autour d'un point fixe", Acta Mathematica, 14 (1): 8193,
doi:10.1007/BF02413316
Kowalevski, Sophie (1891), "Sur un thorme de M. Bruns", Acta Mathematica, 15 (1): 4552,
doi:10.1007/BF02392602
Novel
Nihilist Girl, translated by Natasha Kolchevska with Mary Zirin; introduction by Natasha Kolchevska.
Modern Language Association of America (2001) ISBN 0-87352-790-9
References
1. "Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskay.". Encyclopdia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopdia Britannica.
Retrieved 22 October 2011.
2. Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin. "Women mathematicians". JOC/EFR. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011.
Retrieved June 3, 2012.
3. "Best of Russia --- Famous Russians --- Scientists.". TRISTARMEDIA | Web Design, Web Development, Multimedia,
Creative Web Solutions. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
4. 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 ISBN 0-387-90348-8
5. Roger Cooke, "The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya", Springer-Verlag, 1984.
6. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch, Chapter IV, last sentence.
7. Kochina, Pelageya (1985). Love and Mathematics: Sofia Kovalevskaya. Moscow: Mir Publisher.
8. McFadden, Margaret. Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism.
University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
9. Cooke, Roger (1984). The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya. Springer. p. 159. ISBN 9781461297666.
10. 'Sofya Kovalevskaya' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307874/) at the Internet Movie Database
11. 'Berget p mnens baksida' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085230/) at the Internet Movie Database
12. 'Sofya Kovalevskaya' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264950/) at the Internet Movie Database
Further reading
Cooke, Roger (1984).The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya (Springer-Verlag) ISBN 0-387-96030-9
Kennedy, Don H. (1983). Little Sparrow, a Portrait of Sofia Kovalevsky. Athens: Ohio University Press.
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ISBN 0-8214-0692-2
Wikisource has original
Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1993). A Convergence of Lives: Sofia text related to this article:
Kovalevskaia -- Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary. Lives of women An overview of Sofia
in science, 99-2518221-2 (2., revised ed.). New Brunswick, N.J.: Kovalevskaya's life and
Rutgers Univ. P. ISBN 0-8135-1962-4 career.
Koblitz, Ann Hibner (1987). Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia in
Louise S. Grinstein (Editor), Paul J. Campbell (Editor) (1987), Wikisource has the text of
Women of Mathematics: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, the 1911 Encyclopdia
Britannica article
Greenwood Press, New York, ISBN 978-0-313-24849-8
Kovalevsky, Sophie.
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 2528, 1985. Contemporary mathematics, 0271-4132 ; 64. Providence, R.I.: American
Mathematical Society. 1987. ISBN 0-8218-5067-9
This article incorporates material from Sofia Kovalevskaya on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
External links
Sofia Kovalevskaya (https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu
Wikimedia Commons has
/id.php?id=9711) at the Mathematics Genealogy Project media related to Sofia
"Sofia Kovalevskaya", Biographies of Women Mathematicians Kovalevskaya.
(http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/kova.htm), Agnes
Scott College Wikiquote has quotations
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Sofia Kovalevskaya", related to: Sofia
MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Kovalevskaya
Andrews.
Women's History - Sofia Kovalevskaya (http://womenshistory.about.com/library
/bio/blbio_kovalevskaya.htm)
Brief biography of Sofia Kovalevskaya (https://web.archive.org/web/20060920215141/http://www-
math.cudenver.edu/~wcherowi/courses/m4010/s05/belitspdf.pdf) by Yuriy Belits. University of Colorado
at Denver, March 17, 2005.
Biography (in Russian) (http://www.peoples.ru/science/professor/kovalevskaya/)
Association for Women in Mathematics (http://www.awm-math.org/kovalevsky.html)
Works by or about Sofia Kovalevskaya (https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n82-63856) in libraries
(WorldCat catalog)
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