Chapter 4. Women Mathematicians
The subject of women mathematicians has become a major area in the history
of mathematics over the past generation, naturally connected with the women's
movement in general. Any history of mathematics should include a discussion
of the conditions under which mathematics flourishes and the reasons why some
people and cultures develop mathematics to a high degree while others do not.
To give as complete a picture of the history of mathematics as possible we need
to examine these conditions, and the case of women in mathematics is a very
instructive example.
The author, who began studying the history of mathematics by researching
the career of Sof'ya Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), has heard it objected that women
mathematicians are receiving attention out of proportion to their mathematical
merit while many talented male mathematicians are being neglected by histori-
ans. Such an objection is beside the point. Male mathematicians did not have
to overcome the energy- and time-consuming obstacles that women faced. The
justification for devoting a full chapter to women mathematicians and for making
women mathematicians a separate area of study is very simple: Until recently, all
women mathematicians had one thing in common, a societal expectation that they
would spend most of their time ministering to the needs of their families. A di-
rect corollary of that expectation was that a mathematical career should not be
a woman's first priority and that societal institutions need not support or even
recognize any striving for such a career. In fact, Barnard College once had a policy
of firing women who got married on the grounds that "the College cannot afford
to have women on the staff to whom the college work is secondary; the College is
not willing to stamp with approval a woman to whom self-elected home duties can
be secondary."^1 In other words, if a woman chooses to marry, her duties as a wife
should be first priority. If they aren't, she is a bad woman and hence unfit to be on
the staff; if they are, her duties at the College must be secondary, and again, she is
unfit to be on the staff.
The subject "women mathematicians" could be replaced by a category having
no reference to gender, as "mathematics practiced under conditions of discrimina-
tion." In that way the subject would be enlarged so as to include minorities such
as Jewish mathematicians in Europe and the United States from the Middle Ages
until the twentieth century and African Americans up to very recent years. To keep
this chapter of manageable size, however, we confine it to women.
(^1) http: //cwp. 1 ibrary. ucla. edu/Phase2/Maltby_Margaret_El iza0901234567. html
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