KOVALEVSKY, Sophie (Kowalewski) “Sur la propagation de la lumiere dans un milieu cristallise”, in Comptes Rendus, volume 98, 11 February 1884, #6, pp 356-7 in the weekly issue of pp 321-391. This issue is removed/disbound from larger bound volume, and offered with its original wrappers. Good condition. $150
“Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya, (1850 – 1891), was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world — the first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaia was “the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century. Historian of mathematics Roger Cooke writes:…the more I reflect on her life and consider the magnitude of her achievements, set against the weight of the obstacles she had to overcome, the more I admire her. For me she has taken on a heroic stature achieved by very few other people in history. To venture, as she did, into academia, a world almost no woman had yet explored, and to be consequently the object of curious scrutiny, while a doubting society looked on, half-expecting her to fail, took tremendous courage and determination. To achieve, as she did, at least two major results of lasting value to scholarship, is evidence of a considerable talent, developed through iron discipline.”–Wikipedia
“ ‘Sur la propagation de la lumière dans un milieu cristallisé’ Note de Mm Sophie Kowalevski. Dans ses Leçons sur l’élasticité lamé ramène la question de la propagation de la lumière dans un milieu cristallisé à l intégration d un système de trois équatious aux différences partielles Il a trouvé trois expressions analytiques qui satisfont à ces équations ces expressions trouvées par Lamé offrent certaines particularités qui font que le mouvement qu elles représentent est physiquement impossible sans l hypothèse de l existence d un éther impondérable qui entoure chaque molécule de la matière vibrante et joue pour ainsi dire le rôle d un coussin élastique Au contraire les formules obtenues par la savante émule de Sophie Germain représentent un certain mouvement possible physiquement sans avoir recours à l hypothèse de l éther.”–abstract from Le Cosmos, vol 33, January-April 1884.
