80 4. WOMEN MATHEMATICIANSnow have procedures for preventing and prosecuting sexual harassment. Although
it cannot be said that all of these obstacles have been overcome, it is certainly the
case that more and more women are choosing careers in mathematics. In many
universities the number of undergraduate women majoring in mathematics is now
larger than the number of men, and the number of women graduate students is
approaching equality with the number of men. Equality of numbers, however, is
not necessarily the goal. It may be that, given equal opportunity, more women than
men would choose to be mathematicians; or the number of women freely choosing
such a career might be less. What is (in the author's view) the ultimate goal—that
each person should be aware of the opportunities for any career and accorded equal
opportunity to pursue the career of her or his choice has not quite been achieved,
but it is fair to say that a woman can now pursue a career in mathematics and
science with the same expectation of success, depending on her talent, as in any
other major.
2. Ancient women mathematicians
Very few women mathematicians are known by name from early times. How-
ever, Closs (1992, p. 12) mentions a Maya ceramic with a picture of a female
scribe/mathematician. From ancient Greece and the Hellenistic culture, at least
two women are mentioned by name. Diogenes Laertius, in his work Lives of Em-
inent Philosophers, devotes a full chapter to the life of Pythagoras, and gives the
names of his wife, daughter, and son. Since it is known that the Pythagoreans
admitted women to their councils, it seems that Pythagoras' wife and daughter en-
gaged in mathematical research at the highest levels of their day. However, nothing
at all is known about any works they may have produced. All that we know about
them is contained in the following paragraph from Diogenes Laertius:
Pythagoras had a wife named Theano. She was the daughter of
Brontinus of Croton, although some say that she was Brontinus'
wife and Pythagoras' pupil. He also had a daughter named Damo,
as Lysis mentions in a letter to Hipparchus. In this letter he speaks
of Pythagoras as follows: "And many say that you [Hipparchus]
give public lectures on philosophy, as Pythagoras once did. He
entrusted his Commentaries to Damo, his daughter, and told her
not divulge them to anyone not of their household. And she refused
to part with them, even though she could have sold them for a
considerable amount of money; for, despite being a woman,^6 she
considered poverty and obedience to her father's instructions to be
worth more than gold." He also had a son named Telauges, who
succeeded him as head of the school, and who, according to some
authors, was the teacher of Empedocles. Hippobotus, for one,
reports that Empedocles described him as "Telauges, the noble
youth, whom in due time, Theano bore to the sage Pythagoras."
But no books by Telauges survive, although there are still some
that are attributed to his mother Theano.
(^6) It is hardly worth pointing out the slur on women's character implicit in this phrase.