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STEM Heroines: Math role models for girls

Here's our list of female mathematicians through history who broke down barriers in their own lives to learn and live as experts in their field.  

5. Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646 – 1684)

Sait Serkan Gurbuz/The News-Press/AP
Dylan Kemmerling Miller, left, and Wade Larison Gillespie, right, second-graders at Minnie Cline Elementary School in Savannah, Mo., compete during Math March Madness '14, Thursday, March 27.

  • By Staff Correspondent

Elena Cornaro Piscopia was an Italian mathematician and theologian who as a child studied multiple languages, composed music, sang, played numerous instruments, and learned philosophy, mathematics, and theology, according to Association for Women in Mathematics.

As a young woman, she sought the life of a nun, and adopted the habit of the Benedictine order of nuns without entering a convent. She instead focused on her studies, becoming a known polymath – a person whose expertise spans a number of different subject matters – similar to predecessors like Leonardo Da Vinci.

Her doctorate, the first doctorate in the world awarded to a woman, was from the University of Padua, where she studied mathematics, philosophy, and theology. She received a Doctorate of Philosophy degree, after earning – but not being awarded – a Doctorate in Theology. The university did not award another PhD to a woman for 70 years.

After being awarded her doctorate, she went on to lecture at the university.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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