Tag: women

Mary McLeod Bethune – “Genius Knows No Racial Barriers”

In 1904, a young woman with faith in God and a passion for education opened a school in Daytona Florida with $1.50 and five young African-American girls. Over the next fourteen years, the school would add a four-story building containing dormitories for students and teachers, a two-story addition containing kitchen and domestic science facilities, a twelve acre farm for growing vegetables, raising cows and practical training for the girls, another six acre tract and an auditorium. The woman with the drive and passion to do this was Mary McLeod Bethune and this was only the beginning of her amazing and productive life.

Mary McLeod was born in 1875 to Samuel and Patsy McLeod on a small cotton and rice farm in South Carolina. Her parents were former slaves and she was one in a very large family. She worked on the farm as a young child, but was always ambitious. Eventually, she was able to go to a small mission school in Mayesville, SC. Then with scholarship assistance she continued her education at Scotia Seminary in Concord, NC and Moody Bible College in Chicago.

Mary’s goal was to be a missionary to Africa, but she was told that black missionaries weren’t needed, so she returned to teach school in South Carolina. In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune. They had one son, Albert. She worked as a teacher and in social work until in 1899 the family relocated to Palatka Florida where Mary taught in a mission school. Mary felt strongly that an important way to improve the lives of African-Americans was to educate the girls. She was inspired by both Emma Jane Wilson the teacher in the mission school where she was educated and by Lucy Craft Laney who founded the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta Georgia. Bethune spent a year teaching at the Haines Institute and was very impressed with Laney’s educational philosophy.

The Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona was founded in 1904 when Mary rented a small house for $11 a month. With five girls as students, her son, and the help of local parents and churches she began the hard work of creating a school that would eventually become the Bethune-Cookman University in 2007.  In addition to academic classes, the girls were given a rigorous Christian foundation and practical skills such as dressmaking, millinery, and cooking.

Daytona Normal School in 1919

Bethune served as president of the school until 1942, but her time was increasingly taken up with fund raising. In spite of this, she was also involved in other activities that raised awareness and improved the lives of African-Americans, specifically women and children. She served as the Florida president and national president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW.) She attended the Child Welfare Conference called by President Calvin Coolidge in 1928 and was appointed to the White House Conference on Child Health by President Herbert Hoover in 1930. In 1935, Mary brought together 28 agencies to form the National Council of Negro Women. The NCNW sponsored the White House Conference on Negro Women and Children in 1938.

Through these organizations, Mrs. Bethune was instrumental in getting African-American women into officer positions in the Women’s Army Corps during WWII as well as ensuring that black colleges participated in pilot training programs. She lobbied the National Youth Administration to include black youth in their programs. During this time she became close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. Because of this she had easy access to the White House and became a member of the “Black Cabinet” a group of well respected African-Americans that met informally, but had influence over issues affecting all African-Americans. Among her many honors was being the only African-American woman present at the founding of the United Nations in 1945. She represented the NAACP with W. E. B. Dubois and Walter White.

She believed that education about black people was important not only to promote pride in black children, but to promote understanding among all races.

“Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds.”

It seems that she made significant progress toward her goals When Mary McLeod died in 1955, she was remembered in many newspapers across the country for her achievements. Three quotes that I found in Wikipedia sum this up nicely:

She was, “one of the most potent factors in the growth of interracial goodwill in America.”  The New York Times

“So great were her dynamism and force that it was almost impossible to resist her… Not only her own people, but all America has been enriched and ennobled by her courageous, ebullient spirit.”  The Washington Post

“To some she seemed unreal, something that could not be… What right had she to greatness?… The lesson of Mrs. Bethune’s life is that genius knows no racial barriers.”  Daytona Beach Evening News

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, April 6, 1949

Resources
Women of Achievement by Benjamin Brawley (in the public domain)
Mary McLeod Bethune by Emma Gelders Sterne (in the public domain)
These books can be found at the Internet Archives.

Madame Curie – Part 2

Marie and Pierre Curie were both people who preferred to stay out of the limelight. As their fame grew, Marie probably adjusted to the attention better than Pierre did, but doing the work of science was foremost for both of them. Pierre still had a low level position in one of the less prestigious schools in Paris even though he had friends who worked to try to get him a position at the Sorbonne. Marie had finished her work on magnetism and began to look around for a topic for her doctoral thesis. They took a small apartment, Pierre took on more tutoring work and Marie got her teaching certification. Their income was small, but they could make it.

During this time, there was a series of discoveries which would set the stage for the work which would bring Marie Curie her fame. Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays. The exact nature of this radiating energy was unknown, but a connection was hypothesized between X-rays and phosphorescence. Henri Becquerel, with an interest in phosphorescence, experimented to determine whether or not other minerals known to be florescent produced X-rays. After testing many different minerals, the only one which exhibited a similar type of radiating energy was uranium.

The discovery of X-rays created quite a stir, particularly with its implications for medicine, so of course the Curie’s followed the related research. Marie thought that uranium and this radiating energy were of interest and decided to investigate further. By examining ore samples containing uranium, she determined that the amount of radiation was directly related to the amount of uranium in the sample. It wasn’t affected by other factors such as temperature or other elements contained in the sample. This led her to hypothesize that the radiation was a characteristic of the atom itself.

One of the minerals that she investigated was pitchblende. Here she measured much higher levels of radiation than could be accounted for by uranium. She concluded that there must be additional elements within pitchblende that also exhibited this property of radiating energy and began the long and tedious process of isolating and identifying them. She coined the term radioactivity and established the science that would be used to analyze it.

It is important to remember that other scientists were actively involved in similar investigations. Becquerel had in fact discovered, and maybe more importantly, published the concept of radioactivity first. In Marie’s experiments she discovered that the element thorium was radioactive, but Gerhard Schmidt in Germany had discovered the same thing and published it earlier. Marie knew of the importance of announcing and publishing her work in a timely fashion. Since, neither she nor Pierre were members of the French Academy of Science, her former professor Gabriel Lippman presented her first paper on the subject for her in 1898.

It took about four years for Marie to complete her work. She isolated two radioactive elements in pitchblende: polonium and radium. At some point, Pierre put his work aside and began to work with her, as did other scientists and students. Much of the work, especially at the beginning, required back breaking effort. As it turns out, they had to process from 6- 7 tons of pitchblende to get a miniscule amount of radium. Radium is the element that caught the imagination of the world and would be used in things from paint on watch dials to “health” drinks, much to the detriment of those that came in close contact with it.

During this period of time, Marie gave birth to their first daughter, Irene, in 1897. It was, of course, expected that a woman would take care of everything related to the home. When Marie and Pierre were married, their home and lives were simple. It is said that they only had two chairs at their table to discourage visitors from staying. In the evening, they would companionably read physics together. They had a shared obsession with science that overshadowed everything else. When Irene was born this changed dramatically.

Marie went back to her work, but would have to rush home to nurse Irene. She didn’t have enough milk and had to hire a wet nurse. With two nurses to care for the baby, their meager income was stretched even more. With the hard physical work she was doing, the increased expenses, and the feeling of failure at not being able to nurse her baby, the stress took its toll on Marie’s health. Pierre’s father came to the rescue. Dr. Eugene Curie was the physician who had delivered Irene. During the same month, his wife, Pierre’s mother died of breast cancer. So, at the beginning of 1898, Dr. Curie moved in with Marie and Pierre to care for Irene.

Dr. Curie was a godsend. He was a warm, expressive man who Irene and later Eve would remember fondly. He is probably responsible for meeting most of their emotional needs. There is no doubt that Marie loved her children, but she and Pierre were in many ways lost in their scientific world. And after Pierre died in 1906, Marie would close herself off emotionally, preventing them from even mentioning Pierre’s name in her presence.

Pierre had been denied the acclaim in France that he had received internationally, in part due to his unconventional background, and Marie faced these kinds of prejudices as well because she was a woman. By 1902, she had isolated enough radium to determine its place on the periodic table and to satisfy the chemists that it was indeed a new element. She wrote her thesis and received her doctorate and in 1903, Marie, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel were nominated for and received the Nobel Prize in physics.

It wasn’t quite that simple though. The Nobel Prizes were first given beginning in 1901. That first year, and again in 1902, Charles Bouchard nominated all three of them. Other people were chosen both years. Then in 1903 four influential scientists, including Gabriel Lippman, Marie’s former professor whom she considered a friend, nominated Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie for the physics prize with no mention of Marie. Magnus Gustaf Mittag-Leffler a respected Swedish mathematician who was on the nominating committee told Pierre of the nomination. Pierre wrote him that he would not accept the prize unless Marie was included. He approached the committee with this letter, and with the support of Charles Bouchard, the nomination was changed to include Marie.

(Mittag Leffler believed that women were under appreciated in the sciences. He was also the person responsible for raising the private funds to support the appointment of Sonya Kovalevsky to a position of full professor in mathematics at his university in Sweden. She was the first woman to become a professor of mathematics and Marie Curie the first woman to become a Nobel Prize winner. Thank you Professor Leffler!)

Life changed after the Nobel Prize. Although, the Curie’s had not patented their process for extracting radium, they did receive some income from it due to its immense popularity, but probably not enough to make up for the time they had to spend dealing with other people. They had made this choice on principle believing that it was more important to facilitate the work of science than to profit from it.

In 1904 Pierre was finally offered a chair at the Sorbonne, the same year a second daughter, Eve, was born. And in 1905, he was offered membership in the French Academy of Science. The latter came with lab facilities and three posts, one of which he gave to Marie. Then tragedy struck in 1906, when Pierre fell in the street and was struck in the head and died.

Pierre’s death changed Marie. Joy and light seemed to be taken from her. Dr. Curie sustained his granddaughters and taught them about their father, because Marie refused to discuss him after his death. This would be especially important for Eve since she was less than two years old when he died. Marie would be actively involved in their lives, planning their education and being with them, but it was never the same.

Life is complicated and it is difficult if not impossible to determine cause and effect in many areas of our lives. But Pierre Curie understood his wife in a way that I’m not sure anyone else did. Her drive to study science was probably motivated by several things, interest and ability of course, but possibly a need to do the things that had been denied her father, as well as a need to retreat from every day life when depression threatened to overwhelm her.

Curie in a World War I mobile x-ray vehicle

It’s also impossible to give an accurate picture of a complicated person in 3000 words or less. Marie went on to become a professor at the Sorbonne in 1908 and win the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of radium, an award that was almost derailed because of an affair with Paul Langevin. (This, in itself, is a study of how women were treated differently even in the “rational” world of science. The same standard certainly wasn’t applied to Langevin or to Einstein for that matter.) She oversaw the building of The Curie Institute, developed and implemented mobile X-ray machines during World War I, and even got involved in a little intrigue to prevent the Germans from getting their hands on radium during the war.

Marie continued to teach young scientists, although she would do no more original work of the caliber she did in her early life. Some (at least at the time) would try to claim this as evidence that Pierre was the real scientist of the two, but I don’t think this is the case. Many scientists do their best work at an early age. I think they were both exceptional scientists with individual accomplishments and an understanding of each other that brought out the best of each.

Note: The next woman to win a Nobel Prize would be Marie and Pierre’s daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie with her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie in 1935, the year after Marie’s death.

Read about Marie’s early life.

Resources
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith
Six Great Scientists by J. G. Crowther

Three Women Win Nobel Peace Prize for 2011

Three amazing women have won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman. The prize has been awarded to them “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”. Sirleaf and Gbowee are from Liberia which suffered under violent civil war from 1989 through 2003. Karman is from Yemen where people have risen up and demanded a regime change, democracy and peace for all Yemenis. Their struggle is ongoing, but Karman has had an ongoing role in making the voice of women heard since 2005.

Between 1901 and 2011, 826 individuals and 20 organizations have been honored with a Nobel Prize or the Prize of Economics Sciences also given by the Nobel Committee. A few individuals and organizations have been honored more than once. Of all of these, to date only 43 women have been awarded either a Nobel Prize or the Prize in Economic Sciences, fifteen of these women have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Almost half of these awards, 21, have been awarded since 1990. It looks like perhaps women are finally being noticed for the excellent things they can achieve when given the chance.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
This photograph was produced by Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the current president of Liberia. She studied economics and public administration in Liberia and in the United States. She served as Assistant Minister of Finance and Minister of Finance in Liberia until the military coup in 1980. After making remarks critical of the new leader Samuel Doe and the ruling People’s Redemption Council, she fled the country and worked at various financial institutions including the World Bank and Citibank.

During 1985 and 1986, Sirleaf returned to Liberia where she ran for vice-president, but was arrested and convicted for sedition because of her criticism of the Doe regime. She was released because of international pressure and removed from the presidential ticket, but ran for senate instead. Although she won her Senate seat, she refused to take it in protest of the fraudulent elections which had returned Doe to power. She was imprisoned again and when released 8 months later fled the country. In 1992, Sirleaf began work for the UN. During this time she held a number of positions where she was involved in investigations into the Rawandan genocide, as well as the effect of sexual assault and conflict on women and women’s role in peace building.

The First Liberian Civil War in 1989 brought Charles Taylor to power. Sirleaf initially supported him, but came to oppose his rule and returned to Liberia for the 1997 presidential elections. The election results were controversial and Sirleaf again went into exile. The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 and conflict continued until the summer of 2003. Charles Taylor resigned and fled to Nigeria and in October vice-president Moses Blah, then acting president, turned the government over to the National Transitional Government of Liberia. In 2005, Sirleaf again ran for president for the Unity Party. After a runoff election against George Weah, she won 59% of the vote. The election was contested, but Sirleaf was finally declared president on November 23, 2005. Sirleaf won a second term in office in 2011.

Leymah Gbowee
Press conference at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA (US). Jon Styer/Eastern Mennonite University

Leymah Gbowee was 17 when the First Liberian Civil War broke out. After the war, she heard of a training program given by UNICEF to help victims of war cope with their tragedies. She was also the victim of abuse and looking for peace and a way to support her children fled to Ghana. They were basically homeless refugees and eventually returned to Liberia. When she returned she became a volunteer in the Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program run by St Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia. While volunteering, she worked on her Associate degree in Social Work, which she received in 2001. The pastors and lay people of the Lutheran church joined with the Christian Health Association of Liberia to try to help heal the damage done during the conflict.

All war is brutal, but the Liberian conflict made extensive use of child soldiers and many women and girls were victims of rape as a weapon of war. Gbowee realized that “if any changes were to be made in society it had to be by the mothers.” She began reading about peaceful protest, authors such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. She also met other people who were committed to peace, such as Thelma Ekiyor of Nigeria who organized the first meeting of the Women in Peacebuilding Network. Ekiyor named Gbowee as coordinator of the Liberian Women’s Initiative.

In 2002, Gbowee had a dream where God told her to “Gather the women and pray for peace.” She thought the dream was for others to act on, but the women she was working with and whom she respected convinced her that God expected her to act on it. Soon, Gbowee and a few allies, including Asatu a Muslim woman, began going around to churches and mosques after services, and into the market, to talk to women. They handed out fliers with both words and pictures for the women who couldn’t read. Their flyers said “We are tired! We are tired of our children being killed! We are tired of being raped! Women, wake up – you have a voice in the peace process!”

Their movement the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, started with local women and spread. They dressed in white and tried many different strategies, constantly re-evaluating what worked and didn’t. They sang and prayed both Christian and Muslim prayers, staged protests, had sit-ins and even went on a sex strike. Finally, they occupied a soccer field that President Charles Taylor had to pass every day going to and from the Capitol. Charles Taylor finally agreed to meet with them. They extracted a promise from him to go to the peace talks in Ghana.

In June 2003, Gbowee led a delegation of women to the peace talks. They didn’t have a seat at the table, but kept up their demonstrations outside the building. As the talks stalled inside the luxury hotels where the men were meeting, the women kept up their vigil outside in the heat through the month of July. Finally, the women moved inside and blocked the door. Locking their arms together they told the men that they wouldn’t let them out. When the men threatened to break through, their last resort was to take off their clothes. In Gbowee’s book Mighty Be Our Powers, she explains that “In Africa, it’s a terrible curse to see a married or elderly woman deliberately bare herself.” The entire atmosphere of the talks changed and eventually an agreement was reached. The Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed on August 18, 2003 and the Liberian War was officially over. There is still much work to be done. After her election this year President Sirleaf announced “a national peace and reconciliation initiative” headed by Leymah Gbowee. You can see a delightful interview with Leymah and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show here.

Tawakkol Karman
This photo was taken by Harry Wad.

Tawakkol Karman has been fighting for human rights in Yemen for a number of years. Although the Arab Spring has brought the fight for democracy and freedom in the Middle East to our attention in the west only this year, it is not new to Karman. She is a married mother of three with an undergraduate degree in commerce and a graduate degree in political science. In 2005 she founded Women Journalists Without Chains along with 7 other female journalists to promote freedom of expression and democratic rights. This group has documented Yemeni abuses of freedom of the press since 2005. She has openly criticized the government for trials targeting journalists and led demonstrations and sit-ins in Tahrir Square, in Yemen’s capitol Sana’a since 2007.

She is a strong advocate for freedom of the press and for women’s issues, such as education and a ban on forcing women younger than 17 to marry, and has spoken out against government corruption. In January of 2011 after organizing protests against the current government, Karman was arrested and held in chains for 36 hours. Protests and demonstrations through out the country called for her release. She has continued to lead demonstrations.

In a June18 article in The New York Times article “Yemen’s Unfinished Revolution,” she has also been critical of the role of the US in continuing the status quo and putting the “War on Terror” over the human rights of the people of Yemen. In the article she expresses deep regard and respect for the US and its government, as well as US security concerns, and asks that they engage the democratic movement in Yemen rather than depending only on the members of the old regime. She asks the same thing of the government of Saudi Arabia.

Karman was in New York in October to demonstrate in front of the UN against giving amnesty to Saleh and calling for his prosecution in the International Criminal Court. During that meeting the UN Security Council signed a resolution condemning Saleh’s government, but supporting an initiative that would give him immunity. While Karman was in New York, she gave an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now which you can see here.

Women are coming into their own in many ways. These three women demonstrate courage that is inspiring. May they inspire us to be all that we can be.

Resources:
Mighty Be Our Powers by Leymah Gbowee written with Carol Mithers.
This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
“The Nobel Peace Prize 2011”. Nobelprize.org. 13 Dec 2011
“Facts on the Nobel Peace Prizes”. Nobelprize.org. 13 Dec 2011
Tawakkul Karman on wikipedia
Leymah Gbowee on wikipedia
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on wikipedia

Sonya Kovalevsky – A Marriage of Convenience

Sonya Kovalevsky in 1880, photographer unknown (source)
Sonya Kovalevsky in 1880, photographer unknown (source)

“Ask him to marry one of us?  You’re crazy,” said Inez.

“It’s the perfect solution”, replied Sonya’s sister Anna.  “A lot of people are doing it.  Women can’t study in Russia.  At least the aristocracy can’t. It’s considered improper,” as she rolled her eyes.  “But married women can travel.”

“And?”

“Don’t you see? If one of us gets married, we can both travel to a foreign university to study.  When we get there he can go his own way.  Strictly a marriage of convenience!”

So the conversation might have gone, in the winter of 1867 in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Anna Krukovsky, her sister Sonya, and their friend Inez wanted to be a part of the new revolution among Russia’s young people.  They wanted to see freedom, progress, and a rise in the standard of education for women in their country.  In the 1860s and 70s, quite a few young Russian women among the aristocracy were leaving their parents homes to study.  They did this by marrying young men of like mind, going abroad to study, and then going their separate ways.

Sonya, born in January of 1850 in Russia, was the daughter of Vasily Korvin-Krukovsky and Yelizaveta Shubert both well educated members of the Russian aristocracy.  But, they, like most of us, were products of their own time. This dictated that girls were educated in the home and only in certain subjects. Sonya was raised, primarily, by a nursery maids and governesses.  The first governess that she recalls in her fictionalized autobiography of her childhood, The Sister’s Rajevsky, was the “abominable French woman.” This woman was sent away when it was discovered that Anna could barely read.  She was replaced by a Russian woman who had been living in England and had completely absorbed the English way of life. She brought a much needed discipline into the household.  Under this new governess, Sonya discovered her affinity for science and mathematics.  Her uncle, Pyotr Vasilievich Krukovsky , spoke about mathematics and it is said that the walls of her bedroom were papered with pages from a book on differential and integral calculus. Even though she didn’t have the background to understand it at the time, mathematics captured Sonya’s imagination. What she learned, however, was strictly controlled in the household.  It had to be “proper” for a young woman.

Anna Jaclard, Sonya's sister, before 1887, artist unknown (source)
Anna Jaclard, Sonya’s sister, before 1887, artist unknown (source)

Anna had a flair for literature and had defied the conventions by sending a couple of her stories to St. Petersburg to the attention of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  They had been published and she had been paid.  Unfortunately, her father was the first to go through the post on the day her payment arrived, addressed to the housekeeper.  He insisted that the housekeeper open it in front of him and explain.  Anna was caught.  Her father felt betrayed and humiliated, and for a time refused to speak to Anna.

The girls began to work on their mother and eventually were able to convince their parents to hear one of the stories.  This resulted in a slight relaxing of restrictions.  Anna was allowed to correspond with Dostoyevsky, and they were allowed to order books on various topics.  Due to the influence of one of her father’s friends, a tutor was retained to teach Sonya science and mathematics, although, her father still considered it to be an “unusual and unfeminine” area of study.  Sonya flourished, but soon reached the extent of what her tutor could teach her. When Sonya began to hint at her desire to go abroad to study her father drew the line and refused to even consider it.

It was after this, during a winter in St. Petersburg, that the girls began their plotting.  The girls first approached a young man of the aristocracy with their proposal.  He was a young professor at the university and surely would understand.  He politely refused, but was sympathetic to their cause and didn’t expose them.  This rejection didn’t stifle the girls’ enthusiasm for the idea.  There don’t seem to be any romantic ideals attached to the idea. In their minds the proposal was strictly a matter of practicality and therefore the girls didn’t take the rejection personally.

While in their village Palibino, they had made the acquaintance of a young student.  The son of the vicar, Vladimir Kovalevsky was a serious young man who studied archeology and geology at the university and wanted to continue his studies in Germany. He had a disagreement with his father over a number of things, including his involvement with the young people in the new movement in St. Petersburg.  Because of this, he had moved out of his home, and into a small rented room in the city.  In discussing their circle of friends, they decided that Vladimir might be a likely candidate for their plan.

There were many opportunities for the young people to socialize under supervision, so the girls were able to get to know Vladimir.  They decided that he would be perfect for their marriage scheme.  The three of them approached him at a casual gathering in a friend’s house.  To their surprise, he agreed, with one change in the plan.  He wanted to marry Sonya.

Although Sonya had often felt unloved, all indications are that the Krukovsky parents loved their children though they may have been somewhat removed. They had been persuaded to allow Anna to write for publication and Sonya to study “unfeminine” subjects, but they were in many ways very conventional. Vladimir was young, but of good birth with a promising career ahead of him, so he would probably have been accepted as a match for Anna. She was 23 at the time, an age where she was a little old to be unmarried. However, Sonya was only 17 and of course the expectation was that the older daughter should be married first. Their father flatly refused to consider the match.

The girls were so determined that Sonya decided to force her father’s hand. One evening when the household was busy preparing for a dinner party and both of the girl’s parents had gone out in the afternoon, Sonya dressed for dinner and slipped out of the house without being seen.  She went to Vladimir’s room where he was waiting for her.  They waited anxiously for footsteps in the hallway, knowing it wouldn’t take long.  Sonya had left a note for her parents.  She asked them to forgive her, but to understand that this was what she wanted.  She knew that it would be humiliating for them, and that being found alone with Vladimir would require their marriage.

At home, Sonya’s parents had arrived late as expected.  When the guests had assembled and the table was set, they noticed that Sonya was missing.  Anna told them that she had gone out, and there was a note on her dressing table.  After reading the note, their father said nothing, but left the house.  When he returned he introduced Sonya’s fiancé to the guests.

The marriage proceeded as planned.  The young couple lived in St. Petersburg for six months until Vladimir finished his studies, then moved on to Heidelberg, Germany.  Here Sonya was able to study with celebrated mathematicians and scientists of the day.  Anna and Inez both eventually joined them.  They were able to travel and meet many well-known people, authors as well as scientists.

In her biography of Sonya, Anna Carlotta Leffler describes Sonya as a person who demanded a lot from her close friends and acquaintances. She tended to be jealous of other people and the things in their lives, even of her husband’s work. She says of Sonya that “Her own individuality was far too pronounced to allow her to live in harmony with others.” Sonya threw herself wholeheartedly into new activities such as dancing and horseback riding and gave this same devotion to writing literature and her study of mathematics. This devotion allowed her to become the first woman to be a member of the Russian Academy of Science and the first European woman to become a full professor at a university. This appointment was privately funded at the University of Sweden in 1884.

Although it began as a marriage of convenience with separate living arrangements, Sonya and Vladimir developed a close relationship.  They would often walk and talk all day.  Eventually, Anna moved to Paris and Inez moved on, leaving the couple alone.  They shared great intelligence and devotion to their work.  Later, they shared great devotion to their daughter, Foufi.  Unfortunately, their life together was short.  Vladimir died, Foufi was left with friends in St. Petersburg, and Sonya was alone.  She would spend most of the rest of her life this way.  To her friends, she seemed to always be searching for something.  Perhaps for the acceptance and love that she didn’t feel as a child, and didn’t find in a marriage of convenience.

Resources
Sonya Kovalevsky; a biography, and Sisters Rajevsky; being an account of her life by Sonya Kovalevsky by Anna Carlotta Leffler
Women in Mathematics by Lynn Osen
Notable Women in Mathematics edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl

Women gaining in STEM

I intended this to be a blog about women in history, as in not currently living, but I’ve already added a book review about a women currently fighting for human rights in Afghanistan and I can’t resist posting the link below about the gains women are making in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

I studied math in college, both undergraduate (in the 70s) and graduate (in the mid 80s.) I remember how few women were in my classes. As a freshman and sophomore there were more, but as those who planned to teach moved on to education classes, there were fewer of us in the more technical classes.  (I never really planned to teach high school math, it ended up being a fall back job for me about 20 years later.)  When I got to graduate school I studied Applied Math which basically means I was in class with a lot of future engineers. It wasn’t unusual to be one of 4 or 5 women in a class full of men. Oddly enough, we didn’t usually hang out and study together. I guess we just worked on our “boy social dynamics” as Rebecca Allred says in the article. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t really run into any problems. I always had a few classmates to study with which was all I wanted.

Women have made great strides in fields that have traditionally belonged to men.  I never really felt as though I had something to prove in those days, but I know many women did.  From reading this article it seems as though maybe we really are moving into a time when women can just study and do what they like and are good at without thinking twice about whether it is a man’s field or not. Which is as it should be. Check out the article here.

Women making slow, sure strides in science, math