THE MATHEMATICS OF SONYA KOVALEVSKAYA
(Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York,
1984, ISBN 0-387-96030-9 and 3-540-96030-9, xiv+234 pages)
Sof'ya Vasil'evna Kovalevskaya (1850–1891),
picture reproduced with the permission of the MacTutor Archive.
This was my first effort at writing the history
of mathematics, and I owe a great deal to some very good historians of
mathematics, especially those two superb Brits Ivor Grattan-Guinness and Jeremy
Gray. They are, of course, not responsible for the errors in which I persisted.
The late Walter Kaufmann-Bühler at Springer-Verlag was very gracious in
publishing the book under very favorable terms to me. Looking back on it, I realize
that, like everything one does, doing it provided just enough of a learning
experience to make it seem immature. The remedy is not to rewrite it, but to
write something else. However, for the convenience of the reader who would like
a brief summary, I am linking to two pdf files that I wrote in December 1999,
one on her life, the
other on her work.
Well, enough philosophy! If you've stuck with me this long, you must be
wondering what it is about. Briefly, it contains two summary chapters of
biography. (A full biography was not necessary as Ann Hibner Koblitz' excellent
book "A Convergence of Lives" had filled that gap in 1983.) The other
chapters are analyses of Kovalevskaya's papers. I realize now that the
attempted summaries of the context of all these papers was a bad idea. Better
to summarize in layman's language or not summarize at all. The mathematicians
will find just enough in my book to annoy them that they can't fill in the
details by themselves. The nonmathematicians will find the whole thing too
turgid to be worth reading. The valuable part of the book, in my more mature
opinion, is contained in my judgments as to the significance of Kovalevskaya's
work in the context of its own time and in ours.
Kovalevskaya is highly regarded, especially in
Sweden, where she worked. The picture
below is a statue erected to her memory on the grounds of the Institut
Mittag-Leffler in Djursholm, Sweden, on January 15, 
2000,
the 150th anniversary of her birth. Mittag-Leffler
himself had planned to erect such a statue, but somehow never got around to
it. Instead he kept a plaster bust of
her in his house (which is now the Institut).
Professor Jan-Erik Björk of Stockholm University, an artist of great
talent, was able, using modern techniques, to use that bust to cast this bronze
statue without destroying the plaster.
For the occasion the Swedish Mathematical Society and the Institut
arranged a two-day conference in honor of Kovalevskaya, with mathematical and
historical talks dedicated to Kovalevskaya on Friday, January 14, and public
lectures in the Aula Magna (the location of Nobel Prize acceptance speeches) on
Saturday, January 15. To unveil the
statue, they chose the perfect person: Olga Ladyzhenskaya, one of the most
esteemed specialists in differential equations. It was remarked during the unveiling ceremony that the location
of the statue, just outside the house, was especially fitting. For Kovalevskaya, a nihilist and an extreme
democrat, disapproved of the house itself, which Mittag-Leffler was building
during the 1880s. She thought that
intellectuals ought to live "among the people," not isolated in
comfortable villas. She refused to go
inside the house itself, but agreed to look inside the door. Now she stands permanently facing that door,
on the outside looking in.
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