Author: Kovalevsky, Sonja (pseudonym) [ Kovalevskaia, Sofia Vasilevna (1850-1891) ]
Title: Vera Vorontzoff : Berättelse ur ryska lifvet / Sonja Kovalevsky
Description: Stockholm, Bonnier, (1892). Half-leather. 19x12cm, 252 pp. Contemporary binder's half-leather. Rubbed. Spine & corners scuffed. Exterior hinges tender. Good. ¶ With a preface by Ellen Key. Text entirely in Swedish. The first edition of the posthumously-published novel by the Russian mathematician exiled in Sweden Sofia Vasilievna Kovalevskaia [1850- 1891]. ["Kovalevskaya...the first major Russian female mathematician, responsible for important original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics, and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe....After two years of mathematical studies at Heidelberg under such teachers as Helmholtz, Kirchoff and Bunsen, she moved to Berlin, where she had to take private lessons from Karl Weierstrass, as the university would not even allow her to audit classes. In 1874 she presented three papers - on partial differential equations, on the dynamics of Saturn's rings and on elliptic integrals - to the University of Göttingen as her doctoral dissertation. With the support of Weierstrass, this earned her a doctorate in mathematics summa cum laude, bypassing the usual required lectures and examinations. She thereby became the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her paper on partial differential equations contains what is now commonly known as the Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem, which gives conditions for the existence of solutions to a certain class of those equations. The Kovalevskys returned to Russia, but failed to secure professorships because of their radical political beliefs...." - wikipedia].

Keywords: Russian Mathematicians, Tsarist Russia, Exile Literature, Exiles, Sweden, Female Writers, , ,