Who is the earliest known female mathematician?
Hypatia
Hypatia (born 350–370; died 415 AD) was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor. She is known to have written a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume "Arithmetica", which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus's original text, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, which has not survived. Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy's "Almagest", based on the title of her father Theon's commentary on Book III of the "Almagest".
Marie Charpentier
Marie Charpentier (1903–1994) was the first woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France, and the second woman, after Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin, to obtain a faculty position in mathematics at a university in France.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1962: American mathematician Mina Rees became the first woman to win the Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics, which is the most prestigious award made by the Mathematical Association of America.
Women in computing
Since the 18th century, women have developed scientific computations, including Nicole-Reine Lepaute's prediction of Halley's Comet, and Maria Mitchell's computation of the motion of Venus. The first algorithm intended to be executed by a computer was designed by Ada Lovelace who was a pioneer in the field. Grace Hopper was the first person to design a compiler for a programming language. Throughout the 19th and early-20th century, and up to World War II, programming was predominantly done by women; significant examples include the Harvard Computers, codebreaking at Bletchley Park and engineering at NASA.
Georgia Caldwell Smith
Georgia Caldwell Smith (1909–1961) was one of the first African-American women to gain a bachelor's degree in mathematics. When she was 50, she went on to earn one of the early PhDs in mathematics by an African-American women, awarded posthumously in 1961. Smith was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Spelman College.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1995: American mathematician Margaret Wright became the first female president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1992: Gloria Gilmer became the first woman to deliver a major National Association of Mathematicians lecture (it was the Cox-Talbot address).
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1996: Joan Birman became the first woman to receive the Chauvenet Prize, which is awarded annually by the Mathematical Association of America to the author of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic by a member of the association.
Sophie Piccard
Sophie Piccard (1904–1990) was a Russian-Swiss mathematician who became the first female full professor (professor ordinarius) in Switzerland. Her research concerned set theory, group theory, linear algebra, and the history of mathematics.
History of women in engineering
The history of women in engineering predates the development of the profession of engineering. Before engineering was recognized as a formal profession, women with engineering skills often sought recognition as inventors, such as Hypatia of Alexandria (350 or 370–415 AD), who is credited with the invention of the hydrometer. During the Islamic Golden Period from the 8th century until the 15th century there were many Muslim women who were inventors and engineers, such as the 10th-century astronomer Mariam al-Asturlabi. In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science. Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) was privately schooled in mathematics before beginning her collaboration with Charles Babbage on his analytical engine that would earn her the designation of the "first computer programmer." Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923), a British engineer and inventor studied mathematics at Cambridge in the 1880s. Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (1887–1973) is one of the first female engineers in Europe. In the early years of the twentieth century, a few women were admitted to engineering programs, but they were generally looked upon as curiosities by their male counterparts.
Marion Elizabeth Stark
Marion Elizabeth Stark (23 Aug 1894 – 15 April 1982) was an American mathematician.
She was one of the first women who got a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Mary Frances Winston Newson
Mary Frances Winston Newson (August 7, 1869 December 5, 1959) was an American mathematician. She became the first female American to receive a PhD in mathematics from a European university, namely the University of Göttingen in Germany.
Timeline of women in mathematics
2006: Polish-Canadian mathematician Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann became the first woman to win the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize, which recognizes exceptional achievement in the mathematical sciences.
Timeline of women in mathematics
350–370 until 415: The lifetime of Hypatia, a Greek Alexandrine Neoplatonist philosopher in Egypt who was the first well-documented woman in mathematics.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1829: The first public examination of an American girl in geometry was held.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
2006: Stefanie Petermichl, a German mathematical analyst then at the University of Texas at Austin, became the first woman to win the Salem Prize, an annual award given to young mathematicians considered to have done outstanding work in Raphael Salem's field of interest, primarily Fourier series and related areas in analysis. She shared the prize with Artur Avila.
History of mathematics
Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC). Although the extent of the influence is disputed, they were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
2004: Alison Miller became the first female gold medal winner on the U.S. International Math Olympiad Team.
Maria Hasse
Maria-Viktoria Hasse (May 30, 1921 – January 10, 2014) was a German mathematician who became the first female professor in the faculty of mathematics and science at TU Dresden. She wrote books on set theory and category theory, and is known as one of the namesakes of the Gallai–Hasse–Roy–Vitaver theorem in graph coloring.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1829: The first public examination of an American girl in geometry was held.
Vivienne Malone-Mayes
After Lillian K. Bradley in 1960, Malone-Mayes became one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in Mathematics from University of Texas (and fifth African-American woman in the United States). She was the first African-American member of the faculty at Baylor University, and the first African-American person elected to Executive Committee of the Association of Women in Mathematics.
Hypatia (disambiguation)
Hypatia (c. 370–415), was a Greek scholar and philosopher considered the first notable woman in mathematics.
Thales of Miletus
Thales (who died around 30 years before the time of Pythagoras and 300 years before Euclid, Eudoxus of Cnidus, and Eudemus of Rhodes) is often hailed as "the first Greek mathematician". While some historians, such as Colin R. Fletcher, point out that there could have been a predecessor to Thales who would've been named in Eudemus' lost book "History of Geometry", it is admitted that without the work "the question becomes mere speculation." Fletcher holds that as there is no viable predecessor to the title of first Greek mathematician, the only question is whether Thales qualifies as a practitioner in that field; he holds that "Thales had at his command the techniques of observation, experimentation, superposition and deduction…he has proved himself mathematician."
Miriam Leiva
Miriam Almaguer Leiva is a Cuban-American mathematician and mathematics educator, the first American hispanic women to earn a doctorate in mathematics and mathematics education. She is the Bonnie Cone Distinguished Professor for Teaching Emerita in the Department of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the founder of TODOS: Mathematics for All, an organization devoted to advocacy for and encouragement of Latinx students in mathematics. She is also an author of many secondary-school mathematics textbooks.
María Andrea Casamayor
María Andrea Casamayor y de la Coma (1700–1780) was a Spanish mathematician. She is one of few women scientists and mathematicians who worked in 18th century Spain.
Anneli Cahn Lax
Anneli Cahn Lax (23 February 1922, Katowice – 24 September 1999, New York City) was an American mathematician, who was known for being an editor of the Mathematics Association of America's New Mathematical Library Series, and for her work in reforming mathematics education with the inclusion of language skills. Anneli Lax received a bachelor's degree in 1942 from Adelphi University and her doctorate in 1956. She taught at New York University as a mathematics professor. She was married to the mathematician, Peter Lax.
Ulla Dinger
Ulla Margarete Dinger (born 1955) is a Swedish mathematician specializing in mathematical analysis. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Gothenburg.
Mayme Logsdon
Mayme Farmer Irwin Logsdon (February 1, 1881–July 4, 1967) was an American mathematician known for her research in algebraic geometry and mathematics education. She was the first woman to receive tenure in the University of Chicago mathematics department.
Eleanor Jones
Eleanor Green Dawley Jones (born 1929) is an American mathematician. She was one of the first African-American women to achieve a Ph.D. in mathematics. Currently, Jones works as a consultant for the development of college mathematics curriculums, and as a speaker at events to encourage women and minorities to pursue careers in science and mathematics.
Nalini Joshi
Nalini Joshi is an Australian mathematician. A Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellow and Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, she is the first woman in the School to hold this position, and is a past-president of the Australian Mathematical Society.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1918: German mathematician Emmy Noether published Noether's (first) theorem, which states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law.
M. Gweneth Humphreys Award
The M. Gweneth Humphreys Award or Humphreys Award is a mathematics award established by the Association for Women in Mathematics in recognition of mathematics educators who have exhibited outstanding mentorship. The award is named for Mabel Gweneth Humphreys (1911-2006) who earned her Ph.D. at age 23 from the University of Chicago in 1935.
She taught mathematics to women for her entire career, first at Mount St. Scholastica College, then for several years at Sophie Newcomb College, and finally for over thirty years at Randolph Macon Woman's College. This award, funded by contributions from her former students and colleagues at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, recognizes her commitment to and her influence on undergraduate students of mathematics.
Gloria Olive
Olive was one of a small group of approximately 7 women who established the precursor group to the Association for Women in Mathematics.
16765 Agnesi
This minor planet was named in honor of Italian Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), who was the first Western woman to write a widely translated mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed to a professorship at a university in 1750. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 9 January 2001 ().
Timeline of women in mathematics
1748: Italian mathematician Maria Agnesi published the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus, called "Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana".
Mary Everest Boole
Mary Everest Boole (11 March 1832 in Wickwar, Gloucestershire – 17 May 1916 in Middlesex, England) was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as "Philosophy and Fun of Algebra", and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole. Her progressive ideas on education, as expounded in "The Preparation of the Child for Science", included encouraging children to explore mathematics through playful activities such as curve stitching. Her life is of interest to feminists as an example of how women made careers in an academic system that did not welcome them.
History of mathematics
Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. Pythagoras established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem, though the statement of the theorem has a long history, and with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers. Although he was preceded by the Babylonians and the Chinese, the Neopythagorean mathematician Nicomachus (60–120 AD) provided one of the earliest Greco-Roman multiplication tables, whereas the oldest extant Greek multiplication table is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD (now found in the British Museum). The association of the Neopythagoreans with the Western invention of the multiplication table is evident in its later Medieval name: the "mensa Pythagorica".
Dorte Olesen
Dorte Marianne Olesen (born 1948) is a Danish mathematician. In 1988 at Roskilde University, she became the first Danish woman to be appointed a full professor of mathematics. She has also played a leading role in the development of education and research networks, both in Denmark and at the European level.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
2002: Melanie Wood became the first American woman and second woman overall to be named a Putnam Fellow in 2002. Putnam Fellows are the top five (or six, in case of a tie) scorers on The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1988: Doris Schattschneider became the first woman to present the J. Sutherland Frame Lectures, which are presented at the summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1880: Charlotte Angas Scott of Britain obtained special permission to take the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos Exam, as women were not normally allowed to sit for the exam. She came eighth on the Tripos of all students taking them, but due to her sex, the title of "eighth wrangler," a high honour, went officially to a male student. At the ceremony, however, after the seventh wrangler had been announced, all the students in the audience shouted her name. Because she could not attend the award ceremony, Scott celebrated her accomplishment at Girton College where there were cheers and clapping at dinner, and a special evening ceremony where the students sang "See the Conquering Hero Comes", and she received an ode written by a staff member, and was crowned with laurels.
Lorraine Foster
Lorraine Lois Foster (December 25, 1938, Culver City, California) is an American mathematician. In 1964 she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from California Institute of Technology. Her thesis advisor at Caltech was Olga Taussky-Todd.
Elizabeth Stephansen
(Mary Ann) Elizabeth Stephansen (10 March 1872 – 23 February 1961) was a Norwegian mathematician and educator. She was the first Norwegian woman to be awarded a doctorate degree.
Mathematician
The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 350 - 415). She succeeded her father as Librarian at the Great Library and wrote many works on applied mathematics. Because of a political dispute, the Christian community in Alexandria punished her, presuming she was involved, by stripping her naked and scraping off her skin with clamshells (some say roofing tiles).
Charlotte Scott
Charlotte Angas Scott (8 June 1858, Lincoln, England – 10 November 1931, Cambridge, England) was a British mathematician who made her career in the United States and was influential in the development of American mathematics, including the mathematical education of women. Scott played an important role in Cambridge changing the rules for its famous Mathematical Tripos exam.
Thyrsa Frazier Svager
Thyrsa Anne Frazier Svager (June 16, 1930 – July 23, 1999) was an American academic who was one of the first African-American women to gain a PhD in mathematics. Born in Ohio, she graduated from high school at the age of 16, going to Antioch College in Ohio and then doing her postgraduate degrees at Ohio State University. Frazier Svager was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Central State University (CSU) in Ohio for decades, ending her academic career as provost and dean for academic affairs. She and her husband, physics professor Aleksandar Svager, invested one of their salaries during their careers to build a legacy for scholarships. After her death, the Thyrsa Frazier Svager Fund was established to provide scholarships for African-American women majoring in mathematics.
Ethel Raybould
Ethel Harriet Raybould B.A., M.A. (1899–1987), was the University of Queensland's first female Mathematics Lecturer who taught at the University from 1928 to 1955. She was one of the University's most generous benefactors with her bequest to the University of almost $1 million upon her death supporting fellowships, prizes, and a teaching facility.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1886: Winifred Edgerton Merrill became the first American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, which she earned from Columbia University.
Timeline of women in mathematics
This is a timeline of women in mathematics.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
2004: Melanie Wood became the first woman to win the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. It is an annual award given to an undergraduate student in the US, Canada, or Mexico who demonstrates superior mathematics research.
Elza Furtado Gomide
Elza Furtado Gomide (August 20, 1925 – October 26, 2013) was a Brazilian mathematician and the first women to receive a doctorate in mathematics from the University of São Paulo, in 1950. Furtado was involved in the creation of the Society of Mathematics of São Paulo and was elected head of the department of mathematics of the University of São Paulo in 1968.
Nicole El Karoui
Nicole El Karoui is a French mathematician, and pioneer in the development of mathematical finance, born May 29, 1944, in Paris. She is considered one of the pioneers on the French school of mathematical finance and trained many engineers and scientists to this field.
She is currently professor of Applied Mathematics at Pierre and Marie Curie University, a post she previously held at the École Polytechnique and Université du Maine. Her research has contributed to the application of probability and stochastic differential equations to modeling and risk management in financial markets.
Charlotte Wedell
Charlotte Bolette Sophie, Baroness Wedell-Wedellsborg (27 January 1862 – 22 July 1953) was one of four women mathematicians to attend the inaugural International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Zurich in 1897.
Ingrid Daubechies
From 1994 to 2010, Daubechies was a professor at Princeton University, where she was active within the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. She was the first female full professor of mathematics at Princeton. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University to serve as a professor of mathematics. As of 2019, she is currently the James B. Duke professor in the department of mathematics and electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. In 2016, she and Heekyoung Hahn founded Duke Summer Workshop in Mathematics for female rising high school seniors.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1943: Euphemia Haynes became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, which she earned from Catholic University.
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1979: Mary Ellen Rudin became the first woman to present the Earle Raymond Hedrick Lectures; these lectures were established by the Mathematical Association of America in 1952 to present to the Association a lecturer of known skill as an expositor of mathematics "who will present a series of at most three lectures accessible to a large fraction of those who teach college mathematics."
Euphemia Haynes
Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes (September 11, 1890, Washington, D.C. – July 25, 1980, Washington, D.C.) was an American mathematician and educator. She was the first African-American woman to gain a PhD in mathematics, from the Catholic University of America in 1943.
Emma McCoy
McCoy was the first female professor of maths at Imperial College London. She was the mathematical advisor to the maths and computing section of the Suffrage Science scheme, which celebrates women in science for their scientific achievement and for their ability to inspire others. Suffrage Science was established in 2011 by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre. In 2017 she received an award from the London Institute of Medical Sciences for establishing a Maths and Computing Group.
Timeline of women in mathematics
2012: Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina became the first woman to win the Euler Book Prize, which is awarded annually to an author or authors of an outstanding book about mathematics, for her book "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes."
European Women in Mathematics
European Women in Mathematics (EWM) is an international professional organization dedicated to supporting women's engagement in mathematics. Its goals include encouraging women to study mathematics and providing visibility to women mathematicians. It is the "first and best known" of several organizations devoted to women in mathematics in Europe.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1966: American mathematician and physics professor Mary L. Boas published "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences", which was still widely used in college classrooms as of 1999.
Emmy Noether
Amalie Emmy Noether (; 23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She invariably used the name "Emmy Noether" in her life and publications. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
Timeline of women in mathematics
2002: Susan Howson became the first woman to win the Adams Prize, given annually by the University of Cambridge to a British mathematician under the age of 40.
Electa Nobles Lincoln Walton
Electa Nobles Lincoln Walton (née Electa Nobles Lincoln; 12 May 1824 - 1908) was an American educator, lecturer, writer, and suffragist from the U.S. state of New York. Though she was co-author of a series of arithmetics the publishers decided that her name should be withheld. She became an advocate for the enfranchisement of women. She was said to be the "first woman to administer a state normal school".
Adams Prize
The prize has been awarded to many well known mathematicians, including 
James Clerk Maxwell and Sir William Hodge. The first time it was awarded to a female mathematician was in 2002 when it was awarded to Susan Howson, then a lecturer at the University of Nottingham for her work on number theory and elliptic curves.
Sofia Kovalevskaya
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (), born Sofia Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya ( – 10 February 1891), was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world – the first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaia was "the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century".
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
1975: Julia Robinson became the first female mathematician elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Timeline of women in mathematics
2004: Melanie Wood became the first woman to win the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. It is an annual award given to an undergraduate student in the US, Canada, or Mexico who demonstrates superior mathematics research.
List of women in mathematics
This is a list of women who have made noteworthy contributions to or achievements in mathematics. These include mathematical research, mathematics education, the history and philosophy of mathematics, public outreach, and mathematics contests.
Women in the Catholic Church
Among the notable historical Catholic women teachers have been Trotula of Salerno the 11th-century physician, Dorotea Bucca who held a chair of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna from 1390, Elena Piscopia who, in 1678, became the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Philosophy, and Maria Agnesi, who was appointed around 1750 by Pope Benedict XIV as the first woman professor of mathematics.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1964: Mary Cartwright became the first woman to win the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society of London, which is given every three years since 1901 for the encouragement of mathematical research, without regard to nationality.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1913: American mathematician Mildred Sanderson published her theorem about modular invariants in her thesis. It states: “To any modular invariant i of a system of forms under any group G of linear transformations with coefficients in the GF[pn], there corresponds a formal invariant I under G such that I = i for all sets of values in the field of the coefficients of the system of forms.” She was Leonard Dickson’s first female graduate student, and he later wrote of her thesis, “This paper is a highly important contribution to this field of work; its importance lies partly in the fact that it establishes a correspondence between modular and formal invariants. Her main theorem has already been frequently quoted on account of its fundamental character. Her proof is a remarkable piece of mathematics.” E.T. Bell wrote, “Miss Sanderson’s single contribution (1913) to modular invariants has been rated by competent judges as one of the classics of the subject.”
List of African-American mathematicians
1956: Gloria Ford Gilmer is believed to be the first African-American woman to publish mathematical research, co-authoring an article in "Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society" and another in "Pacific Journal of Mathematics".
Timeline of women in mathematics
Timeline of women in mathematics in the United States
Priscilla Braislin
Priscilla Harris Braislin Merrick (July 1838 – December 15, 1888) was the first mathematics professor at Vassar College.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1927: American mathematician Anna Pell-Wheeler became the first woman to present a lecture at the American Mathematical Society Colloquium.
Anne Bosworth
Anne Lucy Bosworth Focke (September 29, 1868 – May 15, 1907) was an American mathematician who became the first mathematics professor at what is now the University of Rhode Island, and later became the first female doctoral student of David Hilbert.
Frieda Nugel
Frieda Nugel (1884–1966) was a German mathematician and civil rights activist, one of the first German women to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She earned her PhD at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1912, under the supervision of August Gutzmer.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1975: American mathematician Julia Robinson became the first female mathematician elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (; 16 May 1718 – 9 January 1799) was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university.
Olabisi Ugbebor
Olabisi Oreofe Ugbebor (née Grace Olabisi Falode, born 29 January 1951) is the first female professor in mathematics in Nigeria. Born in Lagos, she studied mathematics at the University of Ibadan and then at the University of London, where she obtained a PhD in 1976.
Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin
Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (7 July 1905 – 19 October 1972) was a French mathematician, the second woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France, the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France, and an expert on fluid mechanics and abstract algebra.
Jacqueline Naze Tjøtta
Jacqueline Andrée Naze Tjøtta (1 June 1935 – 9 March 2017) was a French-born mathematician who settled in Norway and became the first female mathematical sciences professor in Norway.
Maryam Mirzakhani
Numerous obituaries and tributes were published in the days following Maryam Mirzakhani's death. As a result of advocacy carried out by the Women's Committee within the Iranian Mathematical Society (), the International Council for Science has agreed to declare Maryam Mirzakhani's birthday, May 12, as International Women in Mathematics Day in respect of her memory.
Lola J. May
Lola J. May (October 29, 1923 – March 13, 2007) was a noted mathematics educator, consultant, author, producer of audio-visual materials, an early proponent of the new math educational process, and a household name among mathematics.
Rose Whelan Sedgewick
Rose Whelan Sedgewick (circa 1904 – 2000) was a 20th-century mathematician. She was the first person to earn a PhD in mathematics from Brown University, in 1929. Her subsequent career in mathematics included assistant professorships at the University of Rochester, the University of Connecticut, Hillyer College, and the University of Maryland.
Suzan Rose Benedict
Suzan Rose Benedict (November 29, 1873 – April 8, 1942) was the first woman awarded a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan and had a long teaching career at Smith College.
Cecilia Krieger
Cypra Cecilia Krieger-Dunaij (9 April 1894 – 17 August 1974) was an Austro-Hungarian (more specifically, Galician)-born mathematician of Jewish ancestry who lived and worked in Canada.
Krieger was the third person (and first woman) to earn a Ph.D in mathematics from a university in Canada, in 1930, as well as the third woman to have been awarded a doctorate in any discipline in Canada.
Krieger is well known for having translated two works of Wacław Sierpiński in general topology.
The Krieger–Nelson Prize, awarded annually by the Canadian Mathematical Society since 1995 for outstanding research by a female mathematician, is named in honour of Krieger and Evelyn Nelson.
Sally Elizabeth Carlson
Sally Elizabeth Carlson (October 2, 1896 – November 1, 2000) was an American mathematician, the first woman and one of the first two people to obtain a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Minnesota.
Ruth Silverman
Ruth Silverman (born 1936 or 1937, died April 25, 2011) was an American mathematician and computer scientist known for her research in computational geometry. She was one of the original founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1971.
Isobel Loutit
Isobel St. Clair Loutit (July 18, 1909 – April 19, 2009) was a Canadian mathematician, educator, inventor, and statistician. She was "one of the first women, if not the first, to work professionally as a statistician in Canada", and she was recognized as an honorary member of the Statistical Society of Canada.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1996: Ioana Dumitriu, a New York University sophomore from Romania, became the first woman to be named a Putnam Fellow. Putnam Fellows are the top five (or six, in case of a tie) scorers on The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.
Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics
, the award has been given 14 times, to 15 different individuals. Dusa McDuff was the first recipient of the award, for her work on symplectic geometry. A joint award was made for the only time in 2001, when Karen E. Smith and Sijue Wu shared the award. The 2013 prize winner was Maryam Mirzakhani, who, in 2014, was the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal. This is considered to be the highest honor a mathematician can receive. She won both awards for her work on "the geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". The most recent winner is Laura DeMarco, who was awarded the prize in 2017 for her "fundamental contributions to complex dynamics, potential theory, and the emerging field of arithmetic dynamics".
Charlotte Scott
Moving to the United States in 1885, she became one of eight founding faculty and Associate Professor of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College, and Professor from 1888 to 1917. She was the first mathematician at Bryn Mawr College and the first department head. During this period she directed the PhD theses of many pioneering women mathematicians. Of the nine women to earn doctorates in mathematics in the nineteenth century, three studied with Scott.
History of mathematics
Emmy Noether has been described by many as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. She studied the theories of rings, fields, and algebras.
Marília Chaves Peixoto
Marília Chaves Peixoto (24 February 1921 – 5 January 1961) was a Brazilian mathematician and engineer who worked in dynamical systems. Peixoto was the first Brazilian woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics and the first Brazilian woman to join the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1975–1977: American amateur mathematician Marjorie Rice, who had no formal training in mathematics beyond high school, discovered three new types of tessellating pentagons and more than sixty distinct tessellations by pentagons.
Maria-Pia Geppert
Geppert was the first woman to become a full professor at the University of Tübingen.
With Emmy Noether, Hilda Geiringer, Ruth Moufang, and Hel Braun, Geppert was one of only a handful of women to work in mathematics in Germany before World War II and later convert their degrees into research careers as full professors.
Timeline of women in mathematics
1759: French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet's translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work "Principia Mathematica" was published posthumously; it is still considered the standard French translation.
Women in science
According to Britannica, Maria Gaetana Agnesi is "considered to be the first woman in the Western world to have achieved a reputation in mathematics." She is credited as the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, the "Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana", (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth). Published in 1748 it "was regarded as the best introduction extant to the works of Euler." The goal of this work was, according to Agnesi herself, to give a systematic illustration of the different results and theorems of infinitesimal calculus. In 1750 she became the second woman to be granted a professorship at a European university. Also appointed to the University of Bologna she never taught there.
Barbara Gertrude Yates
Barbara Gertrude Yates (1919-1998) was an Irish mathematician who seems to have been the first woman born and brought up in Ireland to gain a PhD in pure mathematics.