76 4. WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS
1. Individual achievements and obstacles to achievement
A useful periodization of the progress —and it is a story of progress—of women in
mathematics, is as follows: (1) before 1800, a time when only the most exceptional
woman in the most exceptionally fortunate circumstances could hope to achieve
anything in mathematics; (2) the nineteenth century, a period when the support of
society for a woman to have a career in mathematics was missing, but a very deter-
mined, financially independent woman could at least break into the world of science
and mathematics; (3) the twentieth century, when the dam restraining women from
mathematical achievement developed cracks and finally burst completely, leading
to a flood of women that continues to swell right up to the present. We first discuss
in general terms the obstacles that needed to be overcome, and then give brief bi-
ographies describing the lives and achievements of a number of prominent women
mathematicians.
1.1. Obstacles to mathematical careers for women. In the United States
many of the best graduate schools were all-male until the 1960s. A classmate of
the author at Northwestern University, a very bright and mathematically talented
young woman, mentioned in 1962 that she had written to an Ivy League school to
inquire about study for the doctoral degree and had received a reply saying, "We
have no place to house you." A decade later, the women's movement began to
focus attention on the small number of women in mathematics, and the resulting
investigation into causes has helped to remove some of the obstacles to women's
achievement in mathematics. Among the obstacles, the following have been identi-
fied:
Institutionalized discrimination. It required considerable time for society to realize
that all-male institutions receiving government grants were discriminating against
women. Indeed, the author's classmate mentioned above, whatever she may have
thought, did not complain publicly of discrimination for being rejected by an Ivy
League school. Ironically, the existence of women's colleges, which had arisen partly
in response to this discrimination, was sometimes cited as proof that men's colleges
were not discriminatory. If the opportunities and facilities at the women's colleges
had been equal to those at the men's colleges, that argument would have had merit;
but they were not.
Discrimination went beyond the student body; it was, if anything, even worse
among the faculty. Until the 1970s most universities and many companies had "anti-
nepotism" rules that forbade the hiring of both a husband and wife. Since women
mathematicians often married men who were mathematicians, marriage became a
serious impediment to a career, whether or not the husband was supportive of his
wife's ambition. Karen Uhlenbeck (b. 1942) encountered this kind of discrimination
and later wrote about it:
I was told that there were nepotism rules and that they could not
hire me for this reason, although when I called them on this issue
years later, they did not remember saying these things.
In earlier times Ivy League universities were not the only places women were
not allowed to be. In the eighteenth century, they were not allowed to attend meet-
ings of the Academy of Sciences in Paris nor (by social convention) to enter cafes.
These were the two places where the best scientific minds of the time assembled
