WORLD OF SCIENCE
Mathematician, novelist
DR. T. V. PADMA
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Kovalevskaya left Russia to continue her studies.
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Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow in 1850. Her name is spelt in many different ways Sonia, Sofia, Kovalevksy, Kovalevski... Both her grandfathers were mathematicians. As a child, she was fascinated by a room in the estate on which she grew up: the room was wallpapered with lecture notes on differential and integral calculus.
She had private tutors and learned calculus at the age of 15. At the time, Russian Universities did not admit women, and her father did not allow her to go abroad. Passionate about mathematics she entered into a marriage of convenience with a palaeontologist to leave Russia and continue her studies. In 1869, she went to study in Heidelberg.
Further studies
After two years in Heidelberg, Kovalevskaya went to Berlin, to study privately with Karl Weierstass. With his support, she earned a doctorate from the University of Goettingen in 1874, graduating summa cum laude. Her doctoral dissertation on partial differential equations was so innovative that the faculty decided to award her Ph. D. without any examination, overlooking the fact that she had never attended classes at the University. Kovalevskaya's colleagues considered her statement and proof of what had until then been known as Cauch's Theorem, that after her outstanding dissertation research, the theorem was renamed the Cauch-Kovalevskaya Theorem.
Kovalevskaya returned to Russia, but she and her husband were unable to find the academic positions they wished. Kovalevskaya gave birth to a daughter, and wrote a novel, which was translated into several languages. Kovalevskaya returned to Europe to resume mathematical research, taking her daughter with her. While she studied light propogation in anisotropic media in Berlin her husband became embroiled in a financial scandal in Russia.
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