In celebration of Women's History Month, the MAA will be posting photographs and brief bios of notable female mathematicians from its Women of Mathematics poster. The complete 36" by 54" poster is available for free (plus the cost of shipping and handling). Order form here (pdf)

Maria Agnesi (1718-1799)

The eldest child of a wealthy family, Maria Agnesi was first educated at home, then read l’Hôpital and Reyneau, and also discussed mathematics with Riccati. She was the first woman to publish a work in pure mathematics. Her Analytical Institutions (1748) was the most complete book-length treatment of algebra, analytic geometry, and calculus in the eighteenth century.  The book was translated from Italian into English, with a curve’s name “la versiera” mistranslated as “witch,” resulting in the curve being called “the witch of Agnesi.”  According to ideas prominent in the Catholic Enlightenment in Italy, mathematics, unlike other subjects, was thought to provide true knowledge, and there was space for a few talented women. Pope Benedict XIV offered Agnesi the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna, though she did not accept the appointment.  In 1752 she turned from mathematics to nursing work, and, ultimately, died in poverty.

Image credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Gabrielle du Châtelet (1706-1749)

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was married in 1725 to the Marquis du Châtelet. Her aristocratic background and beauty made it possible for her to meet mathematicians and learn mathematics. At various times she studied with Maupertuis, A.-C. Clairaut, and Samuel König. She charmed Voltaire, and lived with him for a number of years. She entered the Paris Academy of Sciences prize competition of 1737 with a paper on the nature and propagation of fire (Euler won). She collaborated with Voltaire on his éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1738), and published Institutions de physique, in 1740.  She is best known for her French translation, with commentary, of Newton’s Principia, published after her death in 1759. For 250 years this was the only French translation. Du Châtelet was one of the few French women of this period to seriously develop a talent for mathematics and physics.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Dame Mary Cartwright (1900-1998)

Mary Lucy Cartwright was the first woman mathematician elected to the Royal Society of London. While at Cambridge University, under the supervision of G.H. Hardy and E.C. Titschmarsh, her thesis on zeros of integral functions generated a series of papers and eventually led to her book on integral functions. Although she did important work with Dirichlet series, Abel summation, analytic functions regular on the unit circle, integral functions, and cluster sets, she is best known for her work with Littlewood on van der Pol’s equation and nonlinear oscillators. Cartwright served as Mistress of Girton College and as president of the British Mathematical Association and the London Mathematical Society. She was a recipient of the Sylvester Medal from the Royal Society and the De Morgan Medal from the London Mathematical Society. She authored nearly 100 articles and books. She was a very effective administrator at Cambridge University and ambassador for several mathematical and scientific organizations. In 1969, Queen Elizabeth II elevated her to Dame Mary Cartwright, the female equivalent of a knighthood.

Courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge

Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)

Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany. Her brother, astronomer William Herschel, discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. When William moved to England to become an organist, Caroline joined him. He taught her music, but also astronomy and mathematics. She began a career as a singer, but William’s need and her skill in applied mathematics led her to assist him by making calculations based on his observations.  She systematically searched for comets and discovered eight between 1786 and 1797.  She also discovered three new nebulae, including the companion to the Andromeda nebula.  Her revised and updated version of Flamsteed’s star catalogue was published by the Royal Society in 1798.  Later, while assisting William’s son John F. W. Herschel, she catalogued 2500 nebulae for which she received the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1828. She was named an honorary member of the Royal Society in 1835.

Image credit: Courtesy of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.

Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler (1883-1966)

Wheeler was born in Hawarden, Iowa, to Swedish immigrants. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the direction of E.H. Moore in 1909 with work in integral equations. While working towards her doctorate, she studied in Germany under David Hilbert in the new field of functional analysis. In particular she studied infinite dimensional linear spaces. In 1918 Wheeler took a position at Bryn Mawr, where she became department chair in 1924. In 1927 Wheeler became the first woman to give the Colloquium Lectures of the American Mathematical Society (the next would be Julia Robinson in 1980.) Her talk was on the "Theory of quadratic forms in infinitely many variables and applications". She was an editor of the Annals of Mathematics for 18 years and retired from Bryn Mawr in 1948.

Courtesy of the Visual Collections, Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College.