Mathematical women—creating historical resources

Abstract

J ohn Fauvel (1947–2001) was a past President of the BSHM, with a flair for pinpointing unusual topics, and in the 1990s he provided the motivation for this research into mathematical women. It soon became clear that the research partitioned itself into two supplementary strands, which had to be dealt with separately, and the purpose of this short paper is to ensure that people are aware of the existence of both strands, and the linkage between them. Strand A was concerned with identifying the individual women who contributed to the development of mathematics, while Strand B involved a knowledge of their works, which provide the evidence. Fauvel’s contribution was significant because, when I was a tutor on the Open University History of Mathematics course, and remarked on the very few women mentioned in it, he encouraged me to apply for a fellowship grant for a research project to improve the situation myself—which eventually generated the resources presented here. For Strand A, the names of only a handful of really renowned women were already known (even fewer of them writing in English), so it was necessary to start from scratch to generate more candidates. We decided to search among female honours graduates in mathematics within the British Isles, and this involved creating a list of all such women who became graduates as soon as that possibility became available to them. It is this list which has been generously welcomed by MacTutor and has been incorporated into their website as the Davis Historical Archive. Unfortunately, this was not initially straightforward, in the absence of any easilyavailable publication which set out the universities of the British Isles in order of date of foundation. In the event, having discovered those dates for myself, I had then to add the important information as to whether each Charter permitted the admission of men and women on equal terms. The outcome was most satisfactory in that it turned out that every university of the British Isles founded after 1878 (when London University admitted women) had followed this progressive example, and it was only the more ancient, traditional universities in England, Scotland, and Ireland that dragged their feet. So it is pleasing that an enquiry simply relating to the history of mathematics has incidentally given rise to some useful social background illuminating the history of university education for women in general.