Women Mathematicians
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\ Children's Literature - Sue Poduska\ In this very good reference book from the "Profiles in Mathematics" series, the author presents short biographies of six women, each of whom faced huge obstacles to the pursuit of mathematics and overcame those obstacles to advance science. Although Emilie de Bretueil, an eighteenth-century French woman, had little formal training, she translated Isaac Newton's work for use by scientists of the time. She died at the age of forty-three. Maria Gaetana Agnesi, an eighteenth-century Italian woman, wrote an important book about calculus. Although her mathematical work was well-accepted and encouraged, she was more interested in the helping the poor. Mary Somerville, a nineteenth-century Scottish woman, made numerous connections between mathematics and astronomy. She began her academic career late in life, but made up for her late start. Ada Byron Lovelace, a nineteenth-century English woman, designed one of the first computers. She overcame a domineering mother, but died at the age of thirty-six. Her work was so significant that a computer language was named in her honor 138 years after her death. Sonya Kovalevsky, a nineteenth-century Russian woman, married her husband mainly so that she could study mathematics. She was the first European woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics and furthered the studies of light refraction and partial differential equations, although she died at the age of forty-one. Emmy Noether, a twentieth-century German Jewess, faced gender prejudice and danger from the Nazis in Germany. She wrote many papers about abstract algebra, contributed to the work of many other scientists, taught at Bryn Mawr, and died at the age of fifty-three. The illustrations,timelines, notes (sources), bibliography, list of websites, and index are all very useful. The volume is a well-written reminder of the accomplishments of women. Reviewer: Sue Poduska\ \
