These Days are celebrated all over the country at local universities to encourage women to study mathematics and science. Sonia Kovalevsky Day 2010 at the University of Louisiana at Monroe is intended for female high school students in Northeast Louisiana. The day will consist of informative sessions, competitions, campus tours, and interaction with other high school students, teachers, and faculty.
Sonia Kovalevsky is regarded as the greatest woman mathematician before 1900. She was the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate in mathematics.
Sonia was born in Russia into minor nobility, but she had to go to Europe to get a university degree. Sonia prepared three different doctoral dissertations before settling on a fourth one that, with the support of Weierstrass, earned her a doctorate Summa Cum Laude from the University of Göttingen in 1874 without examination due to the strength of her research.
Sonia and her husband returned to Russia to find a position, but no university would hire them with their European degrees. Even though she struggled to find a university that would hire her, she did not abandon mathematics. In 1883, Mittag-Leffler arranged for Sonia to receive a position at Stockholm University in Sweden.
She won prizes from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the French Academie of Sciences. She also achieved a chair in the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1891, she died of pneumonia at the age of 41.
School of Sciences
Mathematics