10 Women Who Ran the Numbers: History’s Greatest Female Mathematicians
From ancient Alexandria to the Fields Medal: ten mathematicians who did era-defining work, mostly while being told mathematics wasn’t for them.
When Göttingen's faculty debated hiring the greatest algebraist of the age in 1915, the objection was not her mathematics — it was that soldiers returning from the war might be demoralised to learn from a woman. David Hilbert's reply became legend: "We are a university, not a bathhouse." Here are ten women who ran the numbers anyway.
1. Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 355–415)
The ancient world's most famous woman mathematician, head of Alexandria's Neoplatonist school, editor of the era's astronomical canon — murdered by a mob in 415, a death that has stood ever since as a symbol of learning destroyed by fanaticism.
2. Sophie Germain (1776–1831)
Self-taught during the French Revolution's curfews, she corresponded with Gauss under the male pseudonym "Monsieur LeBlanc" — fearing, as she later wrote to him, "the ridicule attached to a female scientist." She made key progress on Fermat's Last Theorem and won the Paris Academy's grand prize for the mathematics of vibrating plates.
"It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go."
— Sophie Germain
3. Ada Lovelace (1815–1852)
Byron's daughter, author of the first published computer algorithm, and the first person to see that computing machines could manipulate more than numbers.
4. Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891)
Contracted a marriage of convenience at 18 to escape Russia and study abroad; became the first woman with a mathematics doctorate and the first with a full professorship. The Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem anchors the theory of differential equations.
5. Emmy Noether (1882–1935)
Noether's theorem — that every symmetry of nature yields a conservation law — is among the deepest results in mathematical physics; Einstein, writing her obituary in the New York Times, called her "the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began." She taught for years unpaid, lectured under Hilbert's name, and was expelled by the Nazi laws of 1933.
6. Katherine Johnson (1918–2020)
The NASA "computer" whose orbital calculations John Glenn demanded as a condition of his flight, a story told in our space-firsts collection.
7. Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799)
Author of the first calculus textbook written by a woman — and the first woman appointed to a university mathematics chair.
8. Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017)
The Iranian geometer became the first woman — and remains the only Iranian — to win the Fields Medal (2014), for work on the dynamics of curved surfaces she described as "doodling": her daughter called her papers "paintings." She died of cancer at 40, at the height of her powers.
9. Karen Uhlenbeck (b. 1942)
In 2019 she became the first woman to win the Abel Prize — mathematics' lifetime-achievement equivalent of the Nobel — for founding geometric analysis. She donated half the prize money to programmes supporting women in mathematics.
10. Julia Robinson — honourable mention by proxy
Her decisive contributions to solving Hilbert's tenth problem, and her election as the American Mathematical Society's first woman president, complete the arc: from Hypatia's Alexandria to the presidency of the profession took roughly fifteen centuries.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1_MpQG2xXVo" title="Emmy Noether and The Fabric of Reality" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen loading="lazy"></iframe>Watch: Emmy Noether and The Fabric of Reality
The theorem about the theorems
Every woman on this list produced mathematics that outlived the institutions that excluded her. Göttingen's bathhouse argument is forgotten; Noether's theorem is taught on every continent, every day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the first woman to win the Fields Medal?
Maryam Mirzakhani, in 2014, for work on the geometry and dynamics of curved surfaces.
What is Emmy Noether famous for?
Noether's theorem, which links every symmetry of nature to a conservation law — a foundation of modern physics.
Why did Sophie Germain use a false name?
She corresponded with Gauss as 'Monsieur LeBlanc,' fearing — as she told him — the ridicule then attached to a female scientist.