SOURCE: "Women in Mathematics" in Woman in Science, University of Notre Dame, 1913, pp. 136-41.

In the following excerpt from an essay describing the earliest female mathematicians, Zahm outlines what is known of Hypatia's life and works.

"All abstract speculations, all knowledge which is dry, however useful it may be, must be abandoned to the laborious and solid mind of man.… For this reason women will never learn geometry."

In these words Immanuel Kant, more than a century ago, gave expression to an opinion that had obtained since the earliest times respecting the incapacity of the female mind for abstract science, and notably for mathematics. Women, it was averred, could readily assimilate what is concrete, but, like children, they have a natural repugnance for everything which is abstract. They are competent to discuss details and to deal with particulars, but become hopelessly lost when they attempt to generalize or...