Sofya Kovalevskaya (1850–1891) grew up in a privileged household with a governess and plenty of servants. Her education was supposed to include needlework, deportment, and other “womanly” subjects, but from childhood she developed tricks and practiced outright disobedience so that she could study math, a subject with which a favorite uncle helped her. Later, to get to universities in central and western Europe, she contracted a phony marriage with a young man with similar aspirations and then went to Göttingen and Berlin, where she had problems at first getting accepted as a student because she was a woman. Kovalevskaya finally found a university teaching position in Sweden and published some of the most important mathematical treatises of modern times. In this excerpt from her autobiographical sketch, she describes her girlhood determination to learn math.

Not until I grew somewhat more familiar with [algebra] did I begin to feel an attraction to mathematics so intense that I started to neglect my other studies. Observing the direction I was taking, my father—who in any case harbored a strong prejudice against learned women—decided that it was high time to put a stop to my mathematics lessons. . . . But somehow I managed to wheedle out of my teacher a copy of Bourdon’s Algebra Course and began studying it with diligence.

Since I was under my governess’s strict surveillance, I was forced to practice some cunning in this matter. At bedtime I used to put the book under my pillow and then, when everyone was asleep, I would read the night through under the dim light of the icon-lamp or the night lamp. . . .

My mathematical knowledge would likely have remained confined to the contents of Bourdon’s Algebra if I had not been aided by the following incident, which motivated my father to reassess his views on my education to some degree.

One of our neighboring landowners, Professor Tyrtov, bought us the textbook of elementary physics he had written. I made an attempt to read it, but in the section on optics, to my chagrin, I encountered trigonometric formulas, sines, cosines and tangents.

Then trying to cope with the formulas contained in the book I tried to explain it for myself. [Kovalevskaya’s old teacher did not know these either.—Ed.]

Some time later I was having a conversation with Professor Tyrtov about his book, and he expressed doubt at first that I could have understood it. To my declaration that I had read it with great interest he said, “Come, now—aren’t you bragging?” But when I told him the means I had used to explain the trigonometric formulas he completely changed his tone. He went straight to my father, heatedly arguing the necessity of providing me with the most serious kind of instruction, and even comparing me to Pascal.

Source: Sofya Kovalevskaya, A Russian Childhood (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1978), 216–18.

Question to Consider

Describe Sofya Kovalevskaya’s intellectual challenges. How does she address the prevailing idea that women should not study math?