Living by Numbers: The Strategies and Life Stories of Mid-Twentieth Century Danish Women Mathematicians

Abstract

This chapter is based on interviews with four women mathematicians who made a research career in mathematics in Denmark from the mid-twentieth century on. Through semi-structured research interviews, we try to capture and pass on glimpses of strategies and experiences in their lives. The four interviewees represent the very few women who achieved faculty positions in a male-dominated field at the universities in Denmark. Their personal stories, in addition to being admirable examples of academic achievement, become stories of how they navigated and succeeded in a society without apparent or fixed solutions for ambitious working women and mothers—and of how they later in life reflected on their choices and options. Their stories are both about women receiving an atypical education in a male-dominated field and about pursuing and succeeding in having a career and a family during a period of change in social values and possibilities for women. In the chapter, we focus on their stories about school life, on the milieu at the universities during their studies, their career choices, gender biases, and on their descriptions of family life and relationships. We coin the concept of “implicit girl,” which was revealed in the interviews, a girl who is created implicitly in our educational system and thus situated in the culture of our society at large.