Overview

Throughout history women have made important contributions to the field of mathematics. Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) wrote the first computer program in 1844, and Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) invented the pie chart. Despite their accomplishments, however, women mathematicians have faced almost insurmountable odds; some were persecuted, and one was even martyred. Hypatia (c. 370-415), the first mathematician to formulate the idea of conic sections, was brutally killed in 415 A.D. because she was a powerful intellectual. Sophie Germain (1776-1831) has a theorem named after her, but was barred from classes at the Paris Polytechnique in eighteenth-century France because she was a woman. French mathematician Emilie de Breteuil (1706-1749) received her excellent education only because her family thought her too tall and ugly to get married. Sonya Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) also has a theorem named...