Sofia Kovalevskaya Math Day 2025 is on Thursday, March 6, 2025: What are some main things women contributed towards in maths?

Thursday, March 6, 2025 is Sofia Kovalevskaya Math Day 2025. Sofia Kovalevskaya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sofia Kovalevskaya in 1880

I will list a few, the ones that are more "obvious" to me. These are some of the more historical / important examples, and a few others that come up in my mind first.

Sofia Kovalevskaya did incredible work in differential and integral analysis. I do not specialize in this area, so I can't interpret much of her work with accuracy, but she was authority enough to be editor of Acta Mathematica, one of the most important journals of all time. She was the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate in mathematics.

Ada Lovelace was a British Countess. She was friends with many eminent scientists and mathematicians of her day. She is famed for her work with Charles Babbage, in the work that would eventually evolve into computers and computer science (both theoretical and practical). It is likely that she invented (or at least came up with the idea of) punch-cards as a way to input device into a computer. Her notes on her & Babbage's work are extremely valuable, and played a fundamental role in the development of the field.

Hypatia of Alexandria is often cited as an example of a classical (Greek, to be specific) woman mathematician. She is typically considered the first notable woman in mathematics. She was part of a Greek philosophical movement that encouraged logical and axiomatic thinking -- paving the way for modern mathematics. She was one of the most prolific contributors to ancient mathematics, and did much to enhance, preserve, and improve the works of Pythagoras, Diophantus, Ptolemy, and Euclid.

Emmy Noether is probably the most notable / important woman mathematician, in my book. Her work in algebra around the turn of the century was extraordinary. She not only revolutionized the subject of algebra, but fundamentally changed the way mathematicians go about their work -- proofs are easier when they are generalized, proofs can be nothing more than very clever constructions, and many things can be described by decompositions or representations -- ideas like this can be said to at least partially originate with Noether. In addition to the work of people like Hilbert, Noether's work helped to modernize mathematics -- indeed, it is often said that after the huge advances of the time, it took most of the rest of mathematicians to catch up.

The more recent women mathematicians I have thought of are Julia Robinson, Fan Chung, and Maria Chudnovsky. Robinson did important fundamental work in the field of mathematical logic, while Chung and Chudnovsky are important contributors to the field of combinatorics / discrete math. You can read more about any of these women on Wikipedia or elsewhere.

What do you think of girls success in science & technology world!?

There should be no such mentality regarding education. Sure, females show a slight disparity in logic/reasoning/math scores in our country - but in countries like Japan, where women are not EXPECTED to show such a disparity, they don't! Our culture raises little girls in the expectation that they will fail in science and math ... and so a lot of them do. There's no doubt, however, that women can and have achieved both scientific and mathematical greatness: Ada Lovelace is known as one of the first computer engineers, Theano was the discoverer of the 'golden ratio', Sofia Kovalevskaya was a great mathematician who did great work on completing the method for rotating solids and she was the third woman ever to be allowed a position as a professor, Yvonne Barr is a virologist and discoverer of the Epstein-Barr virus ........the list goes on and on and on!!! Don't be discouraged by the sexism of your 'friends'.