In recent decades, there has been a lot of emphasis on the under-representation of women in STEM. Unsurprisingly, in the history of science and mathematics, few famous female mathematicians are celebrated, this is largely due to the lack of access women have had throughout history to study mathematics. But for a few women who broke free from gender stereotypes and were able to pursue a mathematical education their names were often forgotten, and their accomplishments underplayed in the male-dominated world of mathematics.
The notoriety these women deserve is now being awarded to them. Through the history of mathematics here are 10 famous female mathematicians every high school student should know, and the contributions they made.
Hypatia (~ 370-415 AD)
Hypatia was a mathematician in Ancient Greece. It is believed to be the first female teacher of mathematics and astronomy. She was the daughter of a prominent mathematician and philosopher, Theon. This enabled her to receive an education that would normally only be available to upper-class males. She worked alongside her father on his problems, but is also thought to have worked independently on conic sections. Although none of her original writings have survived. Hypatia’s work as a professor at the University of Alexandria quickly outstripped her male counterparts and placed her as the foremost mathematician of her time.
In her work as an astronomer, she invented the astrolabe, which was used for navigation. As well as working and teaching mathematics, she became a leader in a Neoplatonism school of philosophy in the famous city of Alexandria.
In the religious tension that existed in Alexandria, she found herself in the middle of a power struggle between two men seeking to become Bishop. One of these men did not approve of Hypatia, and spread rumors she was a witch. Hypatia was violently killed by an angry mob.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799)
An Italian famous female mathematician, Maria Agnesi was the daughter of a professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna, in Italy. As a child, she quickly showed herself to be a genius, speaking multiple languages, and working on complex mathematical problems in her teens. As a young woman, she was the first woman to write a mathematical textbook for young people. Her work was hampered by chronic ill health, which meant she was unable to take up a position at a university as a mathematician. Her illness resulted in her suffering seizures and terrible headaches, the exact nature of the illness is unknown. After the death of her father, she devoted her life to the study of theology and eventually became a nun.
Sophie Germain (1776-1831)
Sophie Germain was a French famous female mathematician, who broke with the social norms of the time. Her family disapproved of her study of mathematics. However, they eventually accepted her love of maths, and Germain taught herself mathematics and philosophy using her father’s library. As a young woman, Germain began corresponding with the leading mathematicians of the time, including Lagrange and Carl Friedrich Gauss. She used the name Monsieur Le Blanc, as she feared they would not take a woman seriously. However, she was forced to disclose her true identity to Lagrange, who became her mentor.
Germain’s worked in various fields. In mathematics, she contributed to the unraveling of Fermat’s Last Theorem. She also made discoveries in Number Theory and the nature of prime numbers. Her work is of great relevance today, as it has applications in cryptography. She did research into the elasticity of materials. Her work led to her winning a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences, on the mathematics governing the vibrations of elastic materials.
Sophie Germain died in June 1831, from breast cancer. In her career, her work influenced Lagrange, Gauss, Fourier, and Poisson. Each of these men’s memories live on through their work, with fields of mathematics named after them; yet Germain was a significant creative mathematical genius in her own right. She was a woman fighting for recognition at a time some of the finest mathematicians were working, and yet she gained their respect and even helped shape their work through her own discoveries.
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron and his wife, Lady Byron. Their marriage was a short and deeply unhappy one. Byron described his wife, rather scathingly, as “Princess of Parallelogram”. Lady Byron took her baby daughter away from the family home and later divorced her husband. Lord Byron was famous for his debauched behavior, and his wife made it her mission to protect her daughter from his influence. Lady Byron saw the arts as a corrupting influence, so raised her daughter to be a mathematician. She employed the finest mathematics tutors to educate her daughter. Ada Lovelace never saw her father again, and she did indeed rise to be a great mathematician.
Ada’s mother introduced her to Charles Babbage. Babbage was a wealthy man, who had the idea of an adding machine. This collection of cogs and wheels he called an Analytical Engine. Lovelace saw the potential of this machine as something far greater. The two developed a close relationship, and Lovelace’s genius was to see the potential for what we would today call a computer, which uses algorithms to solve problems. Ultimately Babbage did not embrace Lovelace’s vision, so his machine never achieved its full potential. However, he is known as the Father of Computers. But Ada Lovelace is truly the founder of modern computer science and the world’s first computer programmer.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
Florence Nightingale is known as a nurse during the Crimean War, and her pioneering work to save the lives of soldiers. However, what is less known, the success was in part down to the meretricious records she kept. Nightingale was also a statistician! She recorded everything and thus was able to make accurate conclusions regarding the causes and rates of mortality in military hospitals. She used her statistical analysis of mortality rates in military hospitals to successfully campaign for reforms in the conditions of the hospitals. Her math skills and her ability as a nurse transformed health care in the 19th century and saved countless lives.
Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891)
Kovalevskaya was a Russian mathematician who was forced to leave Russia to pursue her dream of studying maths. She married and went to Germany. There she was able to attend lectures if the male lecturers allowed, but also received private tutoring from Karl Weierstrass, a brilliant mathematician in Berlin. She eventually earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Göttingen. She was the first woman in Europe to do so.
Tragically, her husband committed suicide, leaving her with a young daughter. Kovalevskaya moved to Stockholm where she became the first woman mathematics professor in Europe.
Kovalevskaya made outstanding contributions to the study of differential equations. In 1884, she became the first woman to become an editor for a scientific journal. As well as being a mathematician, Kovalevskaya also became a novelist, and political campaigner for the rights of women.
Emmy Amalie Noether (1882-1935)
Noether is one of the few women mathematicians whose name is widely remembered. Born in Germany in 1882, her father was a maths professor at the University of Erlangen, where Emmy would later study mathematics. However, initially, Emmy studied languages, and it was thought she would take up a teaching position in language tutoring. However, as an 18-year-old, she made the decision to study math at university. Emmy Noether’s greatest legacy is Noether’s Theorem. This is a mathematical theorem that intersects the world of maths and theoretical physics. It links the laws of mathematical symmetry to the conservation laws of physics.
The importance of Noether’s Theorem in the world of theoretical physics is monumental. the work of Albert Einstein and his contemporaries was laid on the foundation of this work, and today in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, Noether’s Theorem is key to unlocking the possibility of this.
Katherine Johnson (1918-2020)
Katherine Johnson was one of the first African American women to work for NASA. Her amazing mathematical brain earned her the nickname the “human computer.” It is interesting to note in the early 20th century, it was often women who had the role of “human computers” in the field of astronomy. Today the use of math to study space is the field of science we call astrophysics. Therefore by definition, women were the first astrophysicists.
However, before entering NASA, Johnson was already a pioneer. She was one of only three black students to be selected for West Virginia’s graduate schools. After graduation, she taught math for a short time in schools. However, when the opportunity arose to be part of a newly formed all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA’s) Langley laboratory she devoted her time as a professional mathematician. This position led her to the newly formed NASA. There she was quickly put to work on the space race.
In 1962 NASA was preparing the orbital mission to put Glenn Johnson into space. New computer programs were used to calculate the complex flight trajectories. However, astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the hands of machines, which were prone to errors and glitches. So Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”, aka Katherine Johnson, to check the math! In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom as recognition for her work.
Mary Jackson (1921-2005)
Mary Jackson had to fight racial prejudice during segregation to receive the education she wanted. Despite the odds, she became the first black female engineer in NASA’s history, and like Johnson was one of the Human Computers. At NASA, she worked in the wind tunnel, helping with the design of spacecraft. In the 1970s she took a demotion to head up a team promoting women in NASA. Her work paved the way for other women and people of color to climb the ladder.
Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017)
Mirzakhani was born in Iran in 1977, as a teenager she was the first female to compete in Iran’s International Mathematical Olympiad team, where she won gold medals in 1994 and 1995. She moved to Harvard for graduate school where her sheer creative genius in math drew the attention of the professors. Mirzakhani settled into the fields of theoretical mathematics, a field of highly complex ideas of mysterious things like moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.
Her brilliance earned her the prestigious Fields Medal for Mathematics, which is the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, she was the first female mathematician to be awarded it. However, her life was cut short after a long battle with breast cancer.
Why Study Famous Female Mathematicians?
Why study these women is an important question to ask. Many of them have not made the same kind of discoveries as their male counterparts like Pythagoras, or Fibonacci: mathematicians who are “popular” to look at as homeschoolers. However, these women (and others like them) are worth studying in their own right for many reasons. Firstly, they are pioneers. Women like Maria Agnesi were brilliant, and as pioneers, they broke through into a world closed to most women. Secondly, famous female mathematicians like Germain and Lovelace made groundbreaking contributions to mathematics. Had they been men, their names would have been better known. Lovelace is now receiving the recognition she deserves and has a coding language named after her, Ada. Finally, it can be difficult to study anyone whose work seems obscure and hard to understand. Women like Noether and Mirzakhani pioneered into fields few people will be able to comprehend.
However, their achievements are an inspiration to young women seeking to break into a field that still carries a male stereotype. And although their work is hard to understand, that in itself carries a sense of mystery and wonder. The beauty of mathematics is locked in the complexity of it; and like the splendor of the universe, an elegant mathematical formula has an awe about it that can capture some children with the pure unknown mystery of it. Your teens will enjoy learning about these famous female mathematicians and may even decide they should be part of a special math project or Faces of History presentation.
