Embedded Files
As I write this, it's International Women's Day, Russia's war against Ukraine continues to rage, and this is a site about maths. So it seems a good day to celebrate the achievements of Ukraine's women mathematicians, past and present. I've chosen three.
First up is Nina Virchenko, born in 1930. She worked for decades in the area of partial differential equations - equations involving the derivatives of one variable with respect to several others (and you thought integration over one variable was bad enough). She taught large numbers of students, and organized meetings and societies with what sounds like a huge amount of energy, but that's the least of it. At the age of 18, soon after arriving at university, she was arrested by the KGB and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian prison camp for "taking part in Ukrainian nationalist gang" (sounds to me like a great gang to be part of). Eventually, when Stalin died, she was able to return home and resume her career, always under the eye of the KGB until the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became independent. Her life story is inspirational and this quaintly worded account is moving and humbling to read. Now 91 and presumably still in Kyiv, one wonders what the next few weeks and months hold for her.
Valentina Borok, 1931-2004, was another partial differential equations specialist. Based in Kharkiv, she seems to have led a quieter but very productive life - no unwanted trips to Siberia but a long list of journal publications and years of teaching.
Maryna Viazovska, born 1984 in Kyiv, is professor of number theory in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is known for her work in sphere packing. That's the topic of how to pack spheres in (usually) three dimensional space. For example, these cannonballs are arranged in what's called hexagonal close-packed formation, in which the spheres themselves take up 74% of the volume. The atoms of many chemical elements arrange themselves this way (the green ones in the periodic table in this article). Reasoning about three-dimensional packings is not too hard, but Maryna Viazovska solved the sphere-packing problem in 8 and even 24 dimensions. If you're wondering how mathematicians can visualize an 8 or 24 dimensional structure - I don't think they can, any more than you or I, which makes proving anything about them all the more impressive.
I hope these three examples - all born in the 20th century in a medium-sized country that has had far more than its fair share of turmoil - help to put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that there is anything unusual about women being successful mathematicians. When I did my degree long ago, the proportion of women studying alongside me was probably about 10-15%. (There was also exactly one black student among several hundred, and he received an amount of casual racist "banter" from at least one lecturer that would certainly result in dismissal were it to happen today). We were told that there had only ever been one really first-rate female mathematician, Emmy Noether, and that she was referred to as "der Noether" (the masculine article in German), not to put her down but as a "term of respect" - presumably her colleagues were so impressed with her abilities they treated her as an honorary man, such was the mindset at the time.
But it really seems to have changed now. My clientele of students is pretty much balanced between the sexes, and I heard that in the independent girls' school near where I live, over half the students are taking A-level maths - something that was not anywhere close to true even at my own, boys-only school back in the day. So if you're minded to take your maths as far as you can, go for it, regardless of any groups you might or might not identify with - they really don't matter. You could do worse than follow these suggestions, taken verbatim from the article on Nina Virchenko that I linked to above:
• Do not be afraid to not to miss with honor!
• Respect the ideals of national history and culture of their homeland;
• Take care constantly about the greatness of student souls;
• Look in the work of the source of spiritual existence;
• Take the example of the eagle and the ant;
• Think about those who are even in a worse situation;
• As fully as possible realize your intellectual potential;
• Live and work as if you try to catch up an express train;
• And let your speech will be free, imaginative, colorful, bright, juicy, fragrant!
Tutoring to help you in such a goal is, of course, available.
To round things off, here is one of my own photos, taken at the top of the Worcestershire Beacon on March 6th, 2022.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse