96 4. WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS
men who published more than was good for him." Moreover, he received a great
deal of collaboration from his wife that, apparently by mutual consent, was not
publicly acknowledged. He himself admitted that much of his role was to lay out
for Grace problems that he couldn't solve himself. To the modern eye he appears
too eager to interpret this situation by saying that "we are rising together to new
heights." As he explained in a letter to her:
The fact is that our papers ought to be published under our joint
names, but if this were done neither of us get the benefit of it. No.
Mine the laurels now and the knowledge. Yours the knowledge
only. Everything under my name now, and later when the loaves
and fishes are no more procurable in that way, everything or much
under your name. [Grattan-Guinness, 1972, p. 141]
Perhaps the criticism Loria made of Sophie Germain and Sof'ya Kovalevskaya
for obtaining help from first-rate mathematicians might more properly have been
leveled against William Young. To the author, the rationalization in this quotation
seems self-serving. Yet, the only person who could make that judgment, Grace
Chisholm Young herself, never gave any hint that she felt exploited, and William
was certainly a very talented mathematician in his own right, whose talent simply
manifested itself very late in life.
In 1903 Cambridge University Press agreed to publish a work on set theory
under both their names. That book appeared in 1906; a book on geometry appeared
under both names in 1905. Grace was busy bearing children all this time (their last
three children were born in 1903, 1904, and 1908) and studying medicine. She began
to write mathematical papers under her own name in 1913, after William took a
position in Calcutta, which of course required him to be away for long periods
of time. These papers, especially her paper on the differentiability properties of
completely arbitrary functions, added to her reputation and were cited in textbooks
on measure theory for many decades.
Sadly, the fanaticism of World War I caused some strains between the Youngs
and their old mentor Felix Klein. As a patriotic German, Klein had signed a
declaration of support for the German position at the beginning of the war. Four
years later, as the defeat of Germany drew near, Grace wrote to him, asking him
to withdraw his signature. Of course, propaganda had been intense in all the
belligerent countries during the war, and even the mildest-mannered people tended
to believe what they were told and to hate the enemy. Klein replied diplomatically,
saying that, "Everyone will hold to his own country in light and dark days, but we
must free ourselves from passion if international cooperation such as we all desire is
to assert itself again for the good of the whole" (Grattan-Guinness, 1972, p. 160).
If only other scholars had been as magnanimous as Klein, German scholars might
have had less justification for complaining of exclusion in the bitter postwar period.
At least there was no irreparable breach between the Youngs and Klein. When
Klein died in 1925, his widow thanked the Youngs for sending their sympathy,
saying, "From all over the world I received such lovely letters full of affection and
gratitude, so many tell me that he showed them the way on which their life was
built. I had him for fifty years, this wonderful man; how privileged I am above
most women..." (Grattan-Guinness, 1972, p. 171).
All four of their children eventually obtained doctoral degrees, and the pair had
good grounds for being well-satisfied with their married life. When World War II
