Sofia Kovalevskaya

Sofia Kovalevskaya
Sofia Kovalevskaya in 1880
Born	(1850-01-15)15 January 1850 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	10 February 1891(1891-02-10) (aged 41) , Sweden
Fields	Mathematics, Women right's
Institutions	Russian Academy of Sciences
Alma mater	University of Göttingen (PhD; 1874)
Doctoral advisor	Karl Weierstrass
Known for	Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (Russian: Со́фья Васи́льевна Ковале́вская), born Sofia Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya (1850-1891), was the first major Russian female mathematician. She was responsible for some important original contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. Her sister was the socialist and feminist Anne Jaclard.

There are several alternative transliterations of her name. She herself used Sophie Kowalevski (or occasionally Kowalevsky), for her academic publications. After moving to Sweden, she called herself Sonya.

Sofia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya), was born in Moscow, the second of three children. Her father, Lieutenant General Vasily Vasilyevich Korvin-Krukovsky, served in the Imperial Russian Army as head of the Moscow Artillery before retiring to Palibino, his family estate in Vitebsk province in 1858, when Sophie was eight years old. He was a member of the minor nobility, of mixed Russian - Polish descent (Polish on his father's side), with possible partial ancestry from the Royal Korvin family of Hungary, and served as Marshall of Nobility for Vitebsk province. (There may also have been some Romani ancestry on the father's side.)

Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna Shubert (Schubert), descended from a family of German immigrants to St. Petersburg who lived on Vasilievsky island. Her maternal great grandfather was the astronomer and geographer Friedrich Theodor Schubert (1758−1825), who emigrated to Russia from Germany around 1785. He became a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science and head of its astronomical observatory. His son, Sophie's maternal grandfather, was General Theodor Friedrich von Schubert (Shubert) [1789−1865), who was head of the military topographic service, and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as Director of the Kunstkamera museum.