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Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination.
— Sofia Kovalevskaya
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Sofia Kovalevskaya
mathematician, physicist, novelist, university teacher, communard, writer
1850 – 1891
Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer of equality for women in mathematics. Kovalevskaya was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, in the modern sense of that term, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in mathematics, as well as one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaya was "the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century".