A History of Women in Mathematics: Exploring the Trailblazers of STEM
Dec 2023 · Pen and Sword History
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About this ebook
From ancient Greece to medieval Baghdad, from Revolutionary France to China's Qing Dynasty, women mathematicians have worked alongside men to a degree that was denied them in most other fields of scientific inquiry. Locked out of biological studies first by restrictions on their freedom of travel and later because of concerns that they would be corrupted by evolutionary thought, effectively barred from experimental physics for centuries through lack of access to specialized equipment, and inconsistently permitted a medical education, women have, for three thousand years and more, been a steady presence during every great mathematical era.
They have contributed to the fundamentals of geometry and the expansion of algebra from the earliest days of those disciplines, and stepped in, on multiple occasions, to save the mathematical traditions of their home countries from death by ossification. They have guided us through the twisted realms of non-Euclidean space, gifted us the mathematical models we need to understand the behavior of the metals of our buildings and the soils we construct them upon, and given us an at times chilling view into the fates of super-massive systems over deep time.
A History of Women in Mathematics, the first comprehensive account of women's role in mathematics in 35 years, tells the stories of over a hundred women, some of whom had to go to the lengths of lying about their gender in correspondence, or secrete themselves behind screens during lectures to access the mathematical resources that their male counterparts took for granted, but many of whom had positions of academic honor and international prestige that women in other fields would have to wait centuries to attain. From Theano of Croton to Rachel Riley, here are the tales of the women who have illuminated and demystified the profound structures upon which our reality is built, with stones of number and mortar of imagination.
They have contributed to the fundamentals of geometry and the expansion of algebra from the earliest days of those disciplines, and stepped in, on multiple occasions, to save the mathematical traditions of their home countries from death by ossification. They have guided us through the twisted realms of non-Euclidean space, gifted us the mathematical models we need to understand the behavior of the metals of our buildings and the soils we construct them upon, and given us an at times chilling view into the fates of super-massive systems over deep time.
A History of Women in Mathematics, the first comprehensive account of women's role in mathematics in 35 years, tells the stories of over a hundred women, some of whom had to go to the lengths of lying about their gender in correspondence, or secrete themselves behind screens during lectures to access the mathematical resources that their male counterparts took for granted, but many of whom had positions of academic honor and international prestige that women in other fields would have to wait centuries to attain. From Theano of Croton to Rachel Riley, here are the tales of the women who have illuminated and demystified the profound structures upon which our reality is built, with stones of number and mortar of imagination.
About the author
Dale DeBakcsy has written the popular bi-weekly Women In Science column at Women You Should Know (www.womenyoushouldknow.net) since 2014, creating a freely accessible archive of in-depth and rigorously researched articles detailing the history of women professionals in all branches of STEM. For three years, he was the author and illustrator for the History of Humanism series at New Humanist, and is a contributing author to the Great Minds column at Free Inquiry Magazine. His essays have appeared in Philosophy Now, The Freethinker, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, American Atheist Magazine, The Humanist, and Free Inquiry Magazine. From 2007 until 2018, he (under the incredibly classy pseudonym Count Dolby von Luckner) and Geoffrey Schaeffer co-wrote the historical satire webcomic Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable Comedy Breaching Space and Time, and in 2016 he published The Cartoon History of Humanism at The Humanist Press. By day, he is an instructor in world history, mathematics, and science in the beautiful California Bay Area. By night, he is… very tired. He is the proud father of two girls, two cats, and four chickens. This is his first book for Pen and Sword Books.
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