June 2024

Please reference as: Maria Tamboukou. 2024. 'Future Pasts', https://sites.google.com/view/numbersandnarratives/newsletter/june-2024

Future Pasts

In June 2024, I visited the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm, Sweden to work with Sofia Kovalevskaya's papers and mostly her letters to and from Gösta Mittag-Leffler, who invited at the University of Stockholm to give a private course in 1884 and subsequently worked with her as a colleague, but also as a friend. 'Dear Gosta, I've just received your nice letter. How grateful Iam for your friendship. I really believe it to be the most precious my life has given me' she wrote to him on January 12, 1889 in the wake of her Prix Bordin award that eventually led to her appointment as a full professor of mathematics. Although I knew about her correspondence with Mittag-Leffler I had not quite realized the personal aspects of their relationship, which confirm and contribute to an important concept that has emerged from my research with women mathematicians' correspondences, namely the effortless mingling of the personal and the scientific. Karl Weierstass' letters to Sofia Kovalevskaya are also housed at the Mittag-Leffler Institute Library, an equally important correspondence, where only one side is extant, since Weierstrass burnt all of Kovalevskaya's letters when he received the tragic news of her untimely death at the age of 41.

While in Stockholm, I also visited Kovalevskaya's grave at the Norra begravningsplatsen cemetery, literally "The Northern Burial Place". This is a huge cemetery and it took me some time and some googling map links to find her grave, which I knew how it looked from photographs. I was searching on my own and there were scarcely any people there, but when I found it, it was one of those moments, when I felt deeply moved and elated. To my surprise there were fresh red roses on and around the grave, a strong sign not only that her memory is alive and kicking, but also it is being crafted as we talk. This is another important theme that emerges from this research project in relation to how past, present and future are entangled in women's position in mathematics today.

Quite incidentally in June I had been invited to contribute to an on-line colloquium on the theme of 'Re-imagining Higher Education organized by the by the Immersive Research Institute (IRI) of the Technological University Ireland in collaboration with the Sociological Association of Ireland and the European University Network. Of course I chose to talk about Sofia Kovalevskaya and her struggle to establisg herself not only as a mathematician, but also as a university professor in an all male academic world. This is what she wrote to Mittag-Leffler, when she first invited her to Stockholm University:

As I was working with letters intensively, it was impossible not to trace Kovalevskaya's epistolary addresses around Stockholm, and when I found Villagatan 18, one of the many places that she stayed and wrote letters from while in Stockholm, I was particularly impressed. Her friend, the Polish revolutionary Marie Mendelson has included some of the letters she received from Kovalevskaya in the memoir she wrote about her, but as she notes 'When reading Sophie's letters, it is difficult for me to arrange them chronologically, as they almost never bear a date. The following letter seems to me to be from the year 1886.' (Mendelson, 607) Well, it is not the date of the letter that we are concerned about, in the letter below, but rather the epistolary address, Villagatan 18 in Stockholm.

Stockholm, Villagatan 18.

Dear friend!

Thank you very much for your letter and for the calendar. I received the latter on the day of my departure from Moscow, and the former has just been handed to me. I cannot tell you how much I regret not being able to accept your invitation and come to Paris. One of our professors has just died (at a very inconvenient time in every respect): his death, or rather the election of his successor, gives rise to all sorts of machinations in a certain party at the university (you know that there is a bit of politics everywhere). For this reason, I thought it wiser to return directly to Stockholm.

But you, dear Marie, why don't you come to visit me here? Don't think too long, quickly pack your suitcases and surprise me here, you little Polish wild thing. But joking aside, dear Marie, why don't you come here at the end of this month? The weather is still bearable, as autumn is still beautiful in Stockholm. Vollmar and his wife are currently in Sweden; I have not seen them yet as they are on their way to visit their parents. But towards the end of the month, they are expected here, and how nice it would be if we all met here.

I am very curious to see Vollmar as a husband. He has not written to me since he told me this great news. But I have been told that he is extremely happy, and so is she, by the way. Vollmar seems to enjoy the company of his wife's family. He plays with the children, lets himself be adored by the old aunts (he has already learned Swedish), well, one learns to see that a socialist is not a wild animal that puts everything in terror. His wife was considered the most well-mannered girl in Stockholm. (The type of a well-mannered and intelligent young lady is quite special in Sweden). And among her companions, she had as many admirers as there are grains of sand on the beach.

Now, farewell, my dear, dear Marie. Let me know when you are coming so that I can make all the preparations for your reception.

I greet you and am yours now and forever,

Your Sonja.

References

Mendelson, Marie ‘Briefe von Sophie Kowalewska’. Neue Deutsche Rundschau, No 6 (1897), pp 589-614.