Abstract
This chapter is based on the talk that I gave in August 2018 at the ICM in Rio de Janeiro at the panel on The Gender Gap in Mathematical and Natural Sciences from a Historical Perspective. It provides some examples of the challenges and prejudices faced by women mathematicians during last two hundred and fifty years. I make no claim for completeness but hope that the examples will help to shed light on some of the problems many women mathematicians still face today.
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Notes
- 1.
For a history of the AWM, see [1].
- 2.
- 3.
By women mathematicians I mean women who were producing or developing original mathematics. That is not to diminish the contribution of the many women who simply used mathematics, as for example in accounting practices, or who were employed as human computers, but simply to note that they are not the subject of my discussion.
- 4.
For a discussion of Agnesi’s life, see Paula Findlen’s excellent essay review [2].
- 5.
There was a French translation by a man, Pierre Thomas d’Antelmy, which appeared in 1775. An English translation by John Colson appeared in 1801. It was a mistranslation by Colson, who confused a versiera (the rope that turns a sail) with l’aversiera (she-devil), that led to the cubic curve studied by Agnesi being named the ‘witch of Agnesi’ (an early example perhaps of unconscious bias?).
- 6.
The teaching was done mostly by correspondence, see [5].
- 7.
For biographical information about Ferrand and a discussion of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s pastel portrait, see http://www.pastellists.com/Essays/LaTour_Ferrand.pdf.
- 8.
On 14 February 1832, George Peacock, who in 1837 would become the Lowndean Professor of Geometry and Astronomy at Cambridge, wrote to Somerville to say that he considered The Mechanism of the Heavens “to be a work of the greatest value and importance,” and told her that “Dr Whewell and I have already taken steps to introduce it into our course of studies at Cambridge and I have little doubt that it will immediately become an essential work to those of our students who aspire to the highest places in our examinations.” [6].
- 9.
The paper [7] was Somerville’s first publication and although the conclusions in it were later disproved, it established her as a practitioner of science rather than as a student or an onlooker.
- 10.
Ayrton was the fifth recipient of the Hughes Medal—awarded “in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity or magnetism or their applications”—and the first woman to be awarded it. To date it has been awarded to only one other woman: Michele Dougherty in 2008.
- 11.
The Prix Bordin, which was second in prestige to the Grands Prix of the Académie, was awarded for scientific subjects as well as mathematics.
- 12.
Eliot attended geometry lectures in London and frequently incorporated mathematics into her novels, notably The Mill on the Floss.
- 13.
- 14.
Germain was the first woman to gain such a prize.
- 15.
1880 was a strong year with Joseph Larmor, future Lucasian professor, being senior wrangler, and J. J. Thomson, future Nobel laureate, being second wrangler.
- 16.
For a description of Chisholm’s experience in Göttingen, see [21].
- 17.
Men in Britain could engage in post-graduate research but if they wanted a PhD they had to go abroad. The PhD did not come to Britain until after the First World War.
- 18.
Kovalevskaya, who had studied privately with Weierstrass in Berlin, was awarded a PhD in absentia from Göttingen in 1874 based on the contents of three separate research papers. She took no oral examination.
- 19.
For a discussion about the current situation with respect to mathematics students in Cambridge, see the Varsity interview of 2 November 2017 with Julia Gog https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/13945. In 2014 the Faculty of Mathematics at Cambridge achieved an Athena SWAN bronze award. See https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/womeninmaths/athenaswan.html.
- 20.
In 1891 the American Ruth Gentry was permitted to audit the lectures of Lazarus Fuchs and Ludwig Schlesinger in Berlin for one term before permission was revoked.
- 21.
For additional material by the same authors, see http://www.ams.org/publications/authors/books/postpub/hmath-34.
- 22.
For details of the data, see C. Hobbs, E. Koomen ‘Statistics on Women in Mathematics’ (2006), https://womenandmath.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/statisticswomen.pdf.
- 23.
For information about the different national organisations, see https://www.mathunion.org/cwm/organizations/country.
- 24.
- 25.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Deborah Kent, Caroline Series, and Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze for their valuable comments and suggestions which helped me produce an improved final version of this article.
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Barrow-Green, J. (2019). The Historical Context of the Gender Gap in Mathematics. In: Araujo, C., Benkart, G., Praeger, C., Tanbay, B. (eds) World Women in Mathematics 2018. Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21170-7_6
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