Ode to a math geek: Olga Ladyzhenskaya

[Cypress]

Google Doodle celebrates mathematician Olga Ladyzhenskaya

The prolific Russian thinker would've been 97 on Thursday.

Thursday's Google Doodle looks at Olga Ladyzhenskaya, a mathematician who endured a tragic loss to become one of the great thinkers of her time.

Ladyzhenskaya was born March 7, 1922, in Kologriv, a small town in western Russia, and spent her early years being inspired with a love of mathematics by her father, Aleksandr, who taught the subject.

She lost him as a teenager in 1937, when he was arrested by Soviet authorities, declared an enemy of the state and killed. Her family name stopped her from getting into Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University) two years later, but she ultimately got into Moscow University in 1943. After earning her Ph.D., Ladyzhenskaya went on to lead the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow and to write more than 250 papers.

She's best known for her work on fluid dynamics of the Navier–Stokes equations -- which describe the motion of viscous substances -- and partial differential equations.

Ladyzhenskaya's contributions to the field earned her the Lomonosov Gold Medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002. She died on Jan. 12, 2004, at the age of 81.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/goo...ian-olga-ladyzhenskayas-97th-birthday-2003853

 

[Cypress]

This lady had a lot of strikes against her to overcome in the totalitarian Soviet system.

It seems to me to be a minor miracle she managed to overcome substantial hurdles and climb to the top of the Soviet scientific and mathematical community.

Apparently here father was deemed a "class enemy" during the Great Terror and was killed. In Stalinist times, just being a relative of somebody arrested during the Great Terror could ensure you would be shut out of employment opportunities and civil society. She was also descended from Russian nobility, and her family had all the hallmarks that would put them on the Bolshevik's radar as enemies of the state: former Russian nobility, intellectuals, teachers, and intelligentsia.

During Olga's upbringing, times were very hard especially for intellectuals descended from Russian nobility for whom everything was in short supply including food, paper and clothes. However, this did not stop her father inspiring his pupils and his daughters. Olga's two sisters were forbidden to finish their studies, being expelled from school, but the authorities allowed Olga to finish her studies. However, Olga had problems continuing her education since she was the daughter of an "enemy of the nation".

When she was fifteen years old, in 1937, her father was arrested by Stalinist authorities and executed without trial. Alexander Solschenizyn recalls in his epic of The Gulag Archipelago that although Olga's father had been warned by a peasant that he was on the list of enemies of the state, he refused to run and hide. He stood his ground and continued with his work since he believed his students depended on him. It is believed that he died in an NKVD (Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del) torture chamber during the week between 23 and 30 October 1937 (one of many excellent teachers killed there). The NKVD was the forerunner of the KGB and it is important to note that in 1956 all the teachers killed by them were fully exonerated. During this time millions of suspected enemies were killed so that Stalin remained unchallenged as Soviet leader until his death.

Reports have it that all the men from the old and well-off noble Ladyzhenskii family, who had not left Russia, vanished by the start of 1940s. This tragedy deeply affected Ladyzhenskaya and the family was placed in a very difficult situation with her mother and sisters having to do craft work and make dresses, shoes, soap, as this was their only way for their family to survive.

https://scientificwomen.net/women/ladyzhenskaya-olga-115

 

[Cypress]

First I have heard of this mathemetician

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (Russian: Со́фья Васи́льевна Ковале́вская) (15 January [O.S. 3 January] 1850 – 10 February 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya