A history of women in mathematics : exploring the trailblazers of STEM / Dale DeBakcsy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeBakcsy, Dale, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women mathematicians--Biography.

Women mathematicians.

Women in science--Biography.

Women in science.

Women in science--History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 200 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Barnsley : Pen & Sword History, 2023.

Summary:

"From ancient Greece to medieval Baghdad, from Revolutionary France to China's Qing Dynasty, women mathematicians have worked alongside men to a degree that was denied them in most other fields of scientific inquiry. Locked out of biological studies first by restrictions on their freedom of travel and later because of concerns that they would be corrupted by evolutionary thought, effectively barred from experimental physics for centuries through lack of access to specialized equipment, and inconsistently permitted a medical education, women have, for three thousand years and more, been a steady presence during every great mathematical era. They have contributed to the fundamentals of geometry and the expansion of algebra from the earliest days of those disciplines, and stepped in, on multiple occasions, to save the mathematical traditions of their home countries from death by ossification. They have guided us through the twisted realms of non-Euclidean space, gifted us the mathematical models we need to understand the behavior of the metals of our buildings and the soils we construct them upon, and given us an at times chilling view into the fates of super-massive systems over deep time. A History of Women in Mathematics, the first comprehensive account of women's role in mathematics in 35 years, tells the stories of over a hundred women, some of whom had to go to the lengths of lying about their gender in correspondence, or secrete themselves behind screens during lectures to access the mathematical resources that their male counterparts took for granted, but many of whom had positions of academic honor and international prestige that women in other fields would have to wait centuries to attain. From Theano of Croton to Rachel Riley, here are the tales of the women who have illuminated and demystified the profound structures upon which our reality is built, with stones of number and mortar of imagination"--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Theano of Croton and the Pythagorean Women of Ancient Greece

Chapter 2 Hypatia of Alexandria: Philosopher, Mathematician, Political Casualty

Chapter 3 The Algebraist of Baghdad: Sutayta Al'Mahamali's Medieval Mathematics

Chapter 4 Genius Overcome: The Destruction of Catherine de Parthenay

Chapter 5 Brief Portraits: Antiquity to the Early Modern Era

Chapter 6 Sex, Cards and Calculus: A Day with Émilie du Châtelet

Chapter 7 The Curve Who Became a Witch: The Geometric Calculus of Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Chapter 8 Primal Screams: Sophi Gemain's Mathematical Labours

Chapter 9 Mary Somerville: Saviour of British Mathematics

Chapter 10 Sofia Kovalevskaya: Love Makes all the Partial Difference

Chapter 11 The Englishwoman in America: Charlotte Angas Scott and the Development of American Mathematics

Chapter 12 Spherical Triangles and Domineering Males: The Saga of Grace Chisholm Young

Chapter 13 Brief Portraits: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Chapter 14 Emmy Noether Solves the Universe

Chapter 15 Hilda Geiringer and the Curious Behaviour of Stressed Metals

Chapter 16 Fearless Symmetry: Dorothy Wrinch and the Founding of Mathematical Biochemistry

Chapter 17 In Defence of the Soil: One Century with Hydrodynamic Mathematician Pelageya Polubarinova-Kochina

Chapter 18 Letting Loose the Dogs of Chaos: Mary Lucy Cartwright's Pioneering Portrayals of Functions Behaving Badly

Chapter 19 Equilibrium States: Tatyana Alexeyevna Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa and the Development of Statistical Mechanics

Chapter 20 Master of Matrices: Olga Taussky-Todd and How One of Mathematics' Coolest Objects Refound its Groove

Chapter 21 Varieties: The Life and Mathematics of Hanna Neumann

Chapter 22 Trajectories: Katherine Johnson's Orbital Mathematics

Chapter 23 Julia Robinson and the Cracking of Hilbert's Tenth Problem

Chapter 24 Bringing the Computers of Earth to the Problems of Space: Evelyn Boyd Granville and the Early Days of IBM at NASA

Chapter 25 Impossible Creatures and How to Make Them: The Topological Legacy of Mary Ellen Rudin

Chapter 26 Non-Linear: How Mathematical Lone Wolf Karen Uhlenbeck Found Her Pack

Chapter 27 Expectations Defied: The Algebraic Journey of Raman Parimala

Chapter 28 The Billion Roads from Here to There: The Graph Theory Combinatorics of Fan Chung

Chapter 29 It Came from Teichmuller Space! The Mathematical Adventures of Maryam Mirzakhani

Chapter 30 Brief Portraits: The Modern Age

So, What Precisely Does that ... Mean? A Glossary of Mathematical Terms

Building Your Own Women in Mathematics Library: A Selected Bibliography

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Electronic version: DeBakcsy, Dale. History of women in mathematics.

ISBN:

9781399056519

1399056514

OCLC:

1392165185

Publisher Number:

99996544820