“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.” -Sofia Kovalevskaya
Russian-born Sofia Kovalevskaya was told at numerous points during her life that she had to stop studying math, that girls weren’t good enough, they weren’t allowed to go to school, or teach classes, edit magazines or win awards. Sofia Kovalevskaya never gave in to the couldn’t’s or wouldn’t’s. She fought time and again for her right to continue learning and teaching, eventually becoming one of the most celebrated mathematicians of her century and the first woman professor of a northern European University. Today, we celebrate Sofia and all the young mathematicians who overcome great odds!
When Sofia Kovalevskaya was a little girl in the early 1850’s, her room wasn’t wallpapered with flowers or meadowscapes, it was covered in pages and pages of math lecture notes. She would stare at the pages filled with differential and integral analysis, and while she didn’t understand exactly what she saw, Sofia saw beauty in the calculations.
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