Rebel Women of Mathematics
Women of Mathematics
(Translated) Works from Agnesi:
- Agnesi, M. G., Messbarger, R. M., Findlen, P., & Accademia di Padova. (2005). The contest for knowledge : debates over women’s learning in eighteenth-century Italy. University of Chicago Press.Includes a translation of Agnesi's speech defending the right of women to be curious and seek out education.
- Analytical institutions in four books: originally written in Italian / By Donna Maria Gaetana AgnesiTranslation of her work in math, somewhat dense
Works about Agnesi, long and short
- Mulcrone, T. F. (1957). The Names of the Curve of Agnesi. The American Mathematical Monthly, 64(5), 359–361.Some math included, talks about Agnesi's work and why she was called the "Witch of Agnesi"
- Tietjen, J. S. (2017). Engineering women : re-visioning women’s scientific achievements and impacts. In Springer eBooks. Springer.Includes a few paragraphs about Agnesi, in the "Early Days of Engineering" chapter.
The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God by If the entire book is too long, there's a single chapter that summarizes some of this.
The Unforgotten Sisters by A tad young in tone, but still helpful
Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
Am I remembering correctly that you have sources about Drs Bozeman and Hunt already? Just placing a few items here that Dr Bozeman did, which you've probably already seen:
Primary Works, in French and in English
Emilie du Chatelet: Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings by Translations of Foundations of Physics (partial), Dissertation on the Nature and Propagation of Fire, Discourse on Happiness, Examinations of the Bible, and her notes on Fable of the Bees as well as on the Principia.
- Du Châtelet's Foundations of Physics (1740). trans. Katherine Brading et al., 2018.The entirety of du Chatelet's "Foundations of Physics" (in English translation, missing portions done by the Brading group) are found here.
Philosophy, Science, and History by Includes a partial translation of du Chatelet's Foundations of Physics ("On the Divisibility and Subtlety of Matter"), which starts on page 332.
- Works by Emilie du Chatelet at la BnF [in French]Full scans of her longer works, as well as essays, letters, and more. These are all in French.
Many English translations can be found at the above linked pages/books. If you have an interest in a shorter piece featured here (not a 100 page treatise, please) that's not showing up in any other work, I will translate it for your class.
Secondary Works
- Crasnow, S., & Intemann, K. (2020). The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science. Taylor & Francis Group.Chapter 3 (Emilie du Chatelet: Feminism, Epistemology, and Natural Philosophy), while long, contains thoughts on her work as well as a few direct translations of it.
Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.- The Unforgotten Sisters by A bit young in tone, but still helpful
- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
Written by Clarke herself:
- Murray, J. (2001). A Personal Contribution to the Bombe Story.A document declassified in 2001, written by Joan Clarke Murray, about warfare and some of her work at Bletchley.
- Hut 8 and naval Enigma, Part 1This is a chapter from Codebreakers: the inside story of Bletchley Park. Clarke wrote the first part of this two-chapter sequence, the other (not included) is from Rolf Noskwith. It discusses some of the work done at Bletchley.
Other primary documents from Bletchley Park:
- Imperial War Museum Archives: Interviews and Oral Histories from individuals who were associated with the work done at Bletchley Park.These are a handful of audio recordings from various individuals who worked at Bletchley during WWII. As far as I can tell, none worked in Hut 8, where Joan Clarke was. However, many of these recordings are from women as well as men.
- Bletchley Park Trust. (2019). Enigmas of Bletchley ParkThe Bletchley Park Trust has an archive and a library, however, I do not see that their materials are available online. The closest I can get are these brief articles that have pictures of some of the primary documents.
- Bletchley Park Trust. (2018). Bombe DrawingsThe "Collections Uncovered" series - many of which are no longer available online - seemed to have been a web/social media (?) post highlighting various items from their archives. Here is one about the technology used.
- HW 25: Government Code and Cypher School: Cryptographic StudiesThis is a group of National Archives files related to the work done by Clarke and others at Bletchley Park. Only some are digitized, mostly items related to Turing. All seem to be written by men. I don't see any directly written by Clarke.
I believe you mentioned that you had a number of sources about Germain already, so I went for the more unconventional here: a handful of articles containing correspondence between Germain and others. Secondary works follow after these links.
- Del Centina, A. (2005). Letters of Sophie Germain preserved in Florence. Historia Mathematica, 32(1), 60-75.An article from an Italian scholar on letters from Sophie Germain, including the text of said letters.
The letters themselves are printed here in their original language, which I will translate for your class if interested. Same for the documents listed below.
Secondary Works
- Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.
An episodic history of mathematics : mathematical culture through problem solving by "Sophie Germain and the Attack on Fermat's Last Theorem" is - similar to other works in this book - a brief summary of her life. It ends with an examination of her work on Fermat's Last Theorem.
Fermat's Enigma by Includes an account of Germain's work on Fermat's problem.- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
Dr. Granville, in her own words:
- Granville collection at Smith College, digitized materialsSome later correspondence between Dr. Granville and others, showing everyday life. I'm only linking the digital materials here.
Secondary Works
- Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.
- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
- Smith Centennial Study Oral History Project records, College Archives, CA-MS-00090, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.This is a digitized transcript of an audio recording done with Dr. Haynes in the 1970s. She talks about her work in education, integration in DC schools, and other topics. Transcript starts on page 14.
The link includes other things: correspondence (not from Dr. Haynes, but about her), as well as (page 35) a written script from Dr. Haynes's speech at a Smith class reunion. - The Haynes-Lofton Family Papers, 131. Catholic University of America Special Collections, Washington D. C..This is the largest collection of primary sources on Dr. Haynes. Unfortunately, I don't see that any of the items have been digitized. Some of the documents in this collection are reproduced as part of the publication linked below:
- Kelly, S. E., Shinners, C., & Zoroufy, K. (2017). Euphemia Lofton Haynes: bringing education closer to the “goal of perfection”. Notices Of the AMS, 64(9).A secondary work on Dr. Haynes. This was a 9 page article in the Notices, but the preprint (linked here) on arXiv is much longer and contains more photographs of historic documents than the article itself.
Admiral Hopper, in her own words:
Grace Murray Hopper Collection, National Museum of American History
This is a large, wonderful collection of documents from her life, from the cards she would use to code a machine to more light content showcasing life at the time. It's really worth a browse! Some fun links include:
- New York Times, special to dateline August 6th.Clippings, including a picture of Hopper and Aiken
- PROBLEM L by Grace Hopper unlined paper, two holes at top personnel who worked on different aspects of getting Problem L to runFront page to a much longer technical piece; humorous
Secondary Works
- Smith, A. E. (2022). Women in computational intelligence : key advances and perspectives on emerging topics. Springer.The introduction to this work is about Hopper and her contributions, which provide the backbone for the rest of the book. If a bit technical, this contains quotes from Hopper alongside an account of her life.
- Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.
I think you mentioned you had some items on Dr. Hunt (and Dr. Bozeman) already, so here are just a few, maybe that you've already looked at:
- Fifty years of women in mathematics : reminiscences, history, and visions for the future of AWMChapter "AWM Activity of Fern Y. Hunt," written by the author herself and including her story of her life in math, is linked above.
- HUNT, F. Y. (2005). A Mathematician at NIST Today. In B. A. CASE & A. M. LEGGETT (Eds.), Complexities: Women in Mathematics (pp. 314–327). Princeton University Press.Longer piece written by Dr. Hunt, skews fairly technical.
Chapters and other shorter writings about Hypatia:
Wandering poets and other essays on late Greek literature and philosophyChapter 9 - "Hypatia: Life, Death, and Works"
Long and not particularly limited to math or the sciences, but well-researched and informative.- The Unforgotten Sisters by A tad young in tone, but still helpful
- Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.
- An episodic history of mathematics : mathematical culture through problem solving by "The mystical mathematics of Hypatia" includes a brief account of her life and an introduction to some mathematical concepts.
- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
Full Books:
Given the uptick of interest in Katherine Johnson after the release of "Hidden Figures," I imagine you already have a number of sources in mind for class. Here I picked a few that might not seem obvious, like her memoir (which was popular, but not as popular as Hidden Figures) and some of her technical papers written at NASA. A number of outlets also took the time to interview her in the late 2010s. I'm including a handful of them here.
Works from Johnson herself:
Assorted Interviews:
Given the difficulties in transliteration between English and languages with Cyrillic alphabets, Kovalevskaya's first and last names appear spelled in slightly different ways depending on the text.
She authored a number of works, in Swedish, Russian, German, French, and probably other languages that I haven't come across yet. One primary source with an English translation that might be of interest:
Secondary Works
Who gave you the epsilon? : and other tales of mathematical history by It spite of its younger-seeming title, this is a short but thorough work. "S. Kovalevsky : a mathematical lesson" looks at her life, struggles to get a degree and find a job, and contains quotes from Kovalevskaya as well.
Remembering Sofya Kovalevskaya by A longer work, includes fragments or whole (translations) of messages from Kovalevskaya- An episodic history of mathematics : mathematical culture through problem solving by The chapter "Sonya Kovalevskaya and the mathematics of mechanics" is a brief vignette on her life, plus some mathematics exercises.
- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
Noether herself was wonderfully prolific, and much better pens than mine have summarized her many contributions. Of course, many are in her native German. Some translations have been done, but they are scattered over the web.
- Noether, E. (1983). Gesammelte abhandlungen = Collected papers (N. Jacobson, Ed.). Springer.Arguably the best collection of her work. Unfortunately, it is both in German and we don't have a copy of it. I can pick up a copy for our library, if interested.
Secondary Works
- Noether, E., & Association for Women in Mathematics (U.S.). (1983). Emmy Noether in Bryn Mawr : proceedings of a symposium (B. Srinivasan & J. D. Sally, Eds.). Springer-Verlag.This is a collection (in English) of her work and work inspired by her. It includes selected recollections from her students at Bryn Mawr.
- Who gave you the epsilon? : and other tales of mathematical history by Contains a detailed chapter about Noether, which reprints several longer quotes from those who paid homage to her and her work in various venues (in the New York Times, in letters, in speeches, etc)
Proving it her way : Emmy Noether, a life in mathematics by A detailed but not too dense work on Noether, including various quotes from her and from others who knew her.- An episodic history of mathematics : mathematical culture through problem solving by Includes a chapter called "Emmy Noether and algebra"
- Women of Mathematics by Short summaries of the lives and works of female mathematicians.
- Celebrating Women in Mathematics and Science by Collection of vignettes on notable mathematicians, written by students.
Ross, according to herself (as much as possible):
- NASA. (1963). Space Flight Handbooks Volume 3 – Planetary Flight Handbook.One of the few works by Ross that I could find. She is credited in the Foreward. The work itself is - of course - very technical and it's difficult to say which parts Ross would have contributed.
- What’s My Line? (June 22, 1958). What’s My Line? [video]. Youtube.Ross’s appearance on What’s My Line? She doesn’t speak very much, but it’s interesting to see her on video.
- WEIMERS, L. (1994, October 30). THE SKY WAS THE LIMIT FOR THIS TEACHER FROM - CHEROKEE COUNTY. San Jose Mercury News (CA), p. 1H. Available from NewsBank: Access World NewsA summary of her life/work with quotes from Ross herself.
- SWE Blog. (August 9, 2018). Remembering Mary G. Ross – First American Indian Woman Engineer.Includes Ross's 1969 application to SWE.
- PBS News Hour (November 26, 2023). The cutting-edge work of Native engineer Mary Golda Ross [video]. PBS.Brief video summary of her life, including shots of a number of primary documents.
Secondary Works
Her Space, Her Time by Includes a section on Ross in chapter 3, which tries to share as much information about Ross’s actual work at Lockheed/Skunk Works as possible.
Rise : extraordinary women of colour who changed the worldContains a brief feature on Ross
Life in Indian Boarding Schools:
- Krupat, A. (2021). Boarding School Voices: Carlisle Indian School Students Speak. University of Nebraska Press.Writings from students at the Carlisle Indian School.
- Indian school: Stories of survival. (2011). In Films On Demand. Films Media Group.Students from Mount Pleasant Indian School talk about their lives at the institution.
Wang Zhenyi's Works (in Chinese)
- Preliminary Collection of Defeng Pavilion [in Chinese]One of Wang Zhenyi's longer works. Printed (this version) in 1916.
Sources about Wang Zhenyi
Reverie and Reality by Translation of "Spontaneously Written after Reading the Record of the Huang Mountains" on page 24. Further writings, including two brief passages that are not poetry, are explored starting on page 70, with the section "Following Father as Maiden."
A history of Chinese letters and epistolary cultureA section on Wang and a few translations of her letters begin on page 766.- The Unforgotten Sisters by A tad young in tone, but still helpful. Includes some translations of Wang's poetry and a few sentences attributed to her.
Notable Women of China by Includes a summary of her life, including a handful of short poems.
- Yang, B. (2016). Enacting Guardians of Family Health: From Exemplary Wife to Reformer. In Heroines of the Qing: Exemplary Women Tell Their Stories (pp. 117–154). University of Washington Press.Wang Zhenyi is featured - very briefly - in this chapter on women in medicine. Including this as it contains the only anecdote about her work in medicine that I've seen thus far.