Women and mathematics:  An abbreviated timeline

 

  5th century B.C.  Theano (wife of Phythagoreas) and her 2 daughters run his school after his death

4th century A.D .Hypatia

1678  Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia received the Doctorate of Philosophy degree from the University of Padua. At age thirty-two she was the first woman in the world to receive a doctorate degree.

1748 Maria Gaetana Agnesi published her textbook on calculus that she wrote for her brothers’ instruction, it caused a sensation in the academic world. It was one of the first and most complete works on finite and infinitesimal analysis.

 (1776-1831) Sophie Germain persistently pursued studying mathematics, even published under male pseudonyms

1874 Sofia Kovalevskaia earns the first doctorate in mathematics in modern times, she actually wrote 2 dissertations on the subject

“Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination”

 1882  Christine Ladd-Franklin leaves John Hopkins after completing her dissertation in logic but not beign awarded a doctorate because she was a woman

1886 Winifred Edgerton is the first woman to be granted the Ph.D. in mathematics ( In the U.s.) that she earned at Columbia University

1893 Ida Metcalf is the second woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics in the U.S.

 1904-1907 Emily Noether was permitted to matriculate at Erlangen and in 1907 was granted a doctorate(she was granted the second degree to a woman in the field of mathematics. The first graduated a year earlier) In 1935, the year of Emmy Noether's death, Albert Einstein wrote in a letter to the New York Times, "In the judgement of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began."

1906 Charlotte Scott became the first female vice president of the American Mathematical Society

 1926  Christine Ladd-Franklin awarded her doctorate from Johns Hopkins, 44 years after meeting the requirements

  1943 Euphemia Lofton Haynes becomes the first african american woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics

  1956 Grace Murray Hopper Using FLOW-MATIC, she taught UNIVAC I and II to understand twenty English-like statements

1969, the Data Processing Management Association awarded Grace Murray Hopper the first Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award.

1971 Mary Gray founds the Association for Women in Mathematics

1979-1981 Dorothy L. Bernstein, Goucher College became the first female president of the Mathematical Association of America

1980  Louise Hay was appointed as Head of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago (later to become the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science), becoming at that time the only female head of a major research-oriented university mathematics department in the United States.

1983-1984 Julia Robinson became the first female president of the American Mathematical Society

1989 Announcement by the NRC that there is no “biological determinism” with respect to mathematical understanding and gender

1960’s-1990’s 

In mathematics, women have earned 46 to 47 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded since 1985. In computer science, the proportion of female bachelor's degree recipients reached a high of 37 percent in 1984 and dropped to 28 percent in 1996.

In 1997, 55 percent of the graduate students in all fields were women (Syverson and Bagley 1999) as were 40 percent of the graduate students in science and engineering fields.

In mathematics, women now earn approximately 41% of all master’s degrees and 26% of all doctoral degrees (this is up from 27% and 8% in the 1970’s).

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Statistical information-

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf00327/frames.htm

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2001/section3/indicator30.asp

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

 

Information about Admiral Hopper:

 

http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html

 

Information about African American mathematicians:

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/00.INDEXmad.html

 

Facts about women mathematicians:

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm

 

 

http://www.swt.edu/slac/math/12Myths.html

 

Cool math women crossword puzzle

http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/cross.html

 

Miscellaneous facts from:

Advocates for Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

NO VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO MATH GENE

Patricia B. Campbell, PhD,

Campbell-Kibler Associates, Inc.,
80 Lakeside Dr., Groton, MA 01450
978 448-5402

 

http://www.awm-math.org/