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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Kovalevskaya Sofia Vasilievna Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Sofia Kovalevskaya was born on January 3 (15), 1850 in Moscow, where her father, artillery general Vasily Korvin-Krukovsky, served as head of the arsenal. Mother, Elisabeth Schubert, was 20 years younger than her father. Subsequently, Kovalevskaya spoke about herself: “I inherited a passion for science from my ancestor, the Hungarian king Matvey Korvin; love for mathematics, music, poetry - from my maternal grandfather, astronomer Schubert; personal freedom - from Poland; from a gypsy great-grandmother - love to vagrancy and inability to obey accepted customs; the rest is from Russia. When Sonya was six years old, her father retired and settled in his family estate Polibino, in the Vitebsk province. The girl was hired by a teacher for classes. The only subject in which Sonya showed neither special interest nor abilities in her first lessons with Malevich was arithmetic. However, the situation gradually changed. The study of arithmetic lasted up to ten and a half years. Subsequently, Sofya Vasilievna believed that this period of study just gave her the basis of mathematical knowledge. The girl knew all arithmetic so well, so quickly solved the most difficult problems, that Malevich, before algebra, allowed her to study the two-volume course of Bourdon's arithmetic, which was used at that time at the University of Paris. Seeing the mathematical progress of the girl, one of the neighbors recommended that her father take for Sonya a teacher of fleet lieutenant Alexander Nikolaevich Strannolyubsky. In the first lesson of differential calculus, Strannolyubsky was surprised at the speed with which Sonya mastered the concept of the limit and the derivative, "as if she knew everything in advance." And the girl, in fact, during the explanation, suddenly clearly remembered those sheets of Ostrogradsky's lectures, which she examined on the wall of the nursery in Polibino. In 1863, at the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium, pedagogical courses were opened with departments of natural-mathematical and verbal. The Krukovsky sisters were eager to go there to study. They were not embarrassed that for this it was necessary to enter into a fictitious marriage, since the unmarried were not accepted. They were looking for a candidate for husbands among the raznochintsy and impoverished nobles. Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky was found as a "groom" for Anyuta. And it had to happen that on one of the dates he told Anyuta that, of course, he was ready to marry, but only ... with Sofia Vasilievna. Soon he was introduced into the general's house and, with his consent, became Sophia's fiancé. He was 26 years old, Sophia - 18. Vladimir Onufrievich struck the imagination of a young Polibinsky lady. His life was more exciting than any novel. At the age of sixteen, he began to earn money by translating foreign novels for the booksellers of Gostiny Dvor. He impressed everyone with his memory, abilities and extraordinary inclination to "participate in every movement." Kovalevsky did not want to serve as an official and took up publishing activities in St. Petersburg. He translated and printed books that the progressive people of Russia needed. On September 15, 1868, a wedding took place in a village church near Polibino. And soon in St. Petersburg, Sophia began to secretly attend lectures. The girl soon realized that only mathematics should be studied, and if now, in her youth, one does not devote herself exclusively to her beloved science, one can irreparably lose time! And Kovalevskaya, having passed the matriculation exam, again returned to Strannolyubsky in order to study mathematics more thoroughly before going abroad. On April 3, 1869, the Kovalevskys and Anyuta left for Vienna, as the geologists needed by Vladimir Onufrievich were there. But Sophia did not find good mathematicians in Vienna. Kovalevskaya decided to try her luck in Heidelberg, which was portrayed in her dreams as the promised land of students. After all sorts of delays, the university commission did allow Sophia to listen to lectures on mathematics and physics. During the three semesters of the 1869/1870 academic year, she attended a course on the theory of elliptic functions from Koenigsberger, physics and mathematics from Kirchhoff, Dubois-Reymond and Helmholtz, and worked in the laboratory of the chemist Bunsen, the most famous scientists in Germany. Professors admired her ability to grasp and assimilate material on the fly. Working with astonishing intensity, she quickly mastered the initial elements of higher mathematics, opening the way to independent research. At lectures, she heard Professor Koenigsberger's enthusiastic praise of his teacher, the greatest mathematician of that time, Karl Weierstrass, who was called "the great analyst from the banks of the Spree." In the name of her higher appointment, as she understood it, Sofya Vasilievna overcame her shyness and on October 3, 1870 went to Weierstrass in Berlin. Wishing to get rid of the pesky visitor, Professor Weierstrass offered her to test her knowledge several problems on hyperbolic functions from the category of those, even somewhat more difficult, that he gave to the most successful students of the mathematical faculty, and asked her to come next week. In truth, Weierstrass managed to forget about the visit of the Russian, when exactly a week later she again appeared in his office and announced that the tasks had been solved! Professor Weierstrass petitioned the academic council for the admission of Mrs. Kovalevskaya to mathematical lectures at the university. But the "high council" did not agree. The University of Berlin not only did not accept women as "legitimate" students, but did not even allow them to attend individual lectures as volunteers. I had to limit myself to private studies with a famous scientist. Usually Weierstrass overwhelmed his listeners with his mental superiority, but the lively inquisitive mind of the young Kovalevskaya demanded increased activity from the old professor. Weierstrass often had to take on the solution of various problems himself in order to adequately answer the difficult questions of the student. "We should be grateful to Sofya Kovalevskaya," contemporaries said, "for bringing Weierstrass out of a state of isolation." She studied the latest mathematical works of world scientists, even the dissertations of her teacher's young students. Her health broke down, and because of the impracticality of her friends, they lived very poorly. Preparing to remake a wicked world, they did nothing to have at least a tolerable dinner. Kovalevskaya wrote her first independent work - "On the reduction of a certain class of abelian integrals of the third rank to elliptic integrals". The famous French mathematician, physicist and astronomer Laplace in his work "Celestial Mechanics", considering the ring of Saturn as a collection of several thin liquid rings that do not affect one another, determined that its cross section has the shape of an ellipse. But this was only the first, very simplified solution. Kovalevskaya set out to investigate the question of the equilibrium of the ring with greater accuracy. She found that the cross section of Saturn's ring should be oval in shape. Sophia soon decided to do another study in the field of differential equations. It dealt with the most difficult area of pure mathematical analysis, which at the same time is of great importance for mechanics and physics. Kovalevskaya devoted the winter of 1873 and the spring of 1874 to the study "On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations". She wanted to present it as a doctoral dissertation. The work of Kovalevskaya aroused the admiration of scientists. True, later it was established that a similar work, but of a more private nature, was written by the famous French scientist Augustin Cauchy even earlier than Kovalevskaya. In her dissertation, she gave the theorem a perfect form in terms of accuracy, rigor, and simplicity. The problem began to be called "the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya theorem", and it was included in all the main courses of analysis. Of great interest was the analysis given in it of the simplest equation (the equation of heat conduction), in which Sofya Vasilievna discovered the existence of special cases, thereby making a discovery significant for her time. Her short years of apprenticeship were over. The Council of the University of Göttingen awarded Kovalevskaya a Ph.D. in mathematics and a Master of Fine Arts "with the highest praise". In 1874, Kovalevskaya returned to Russia, but here the conditions for doing science were much worse than in Europe. By this time, Sophia's fictitious marriage "became real." At first in Germany, she and her husband even lived in different cities and studied at different universities, exchanging only letters. "My dear brother", "Good brother", "Glorious" - so she addressed Vladimir. But then other relationships began. In the autumn of 1878, a daughter was born to the Kovalevskys. Kovalevskaya spent almost six months in bed. The doctors were losing hope of saving her. True, the young organism won, but Sophia's heart was struck by a serious illness. There is a husband, there is a child, there is a favorite pastime - science. It seems to be a complete set for happiness, but Sophia was a maximalist in everything and demanded too much from life and from those around her. She wanted her husband to constantly swear his love to her, show signs of attention, but Vladimir Kovalevsky did not do this. He was just another person, passionate about science as much as his wife. Jealousy was one of the strongest shortcomings of Kovalevskaya's impulsive nature. The complete collapse of their relationship came when the spouses did not do their job - commerce, in order to ensure their material well-being. "My duty is to serve science," Kovalevskaya said to herself. There was no reason to expect that Russia would allow her to do so. After the assassination of Alexander II, the time for liberal flirting ended and unbridled reaction began, executions, arrests and exile. The Kovalevskys hastily left Moscow. Sofya Vasilievna and her daughter went to Berlin, and Vladimir Onufrievich went to his brother in Odessa. Nothing connected them anymore. In the room where Kovalevskaya worked, now there was also little Sonya - Fufa, as she called her. It was necessary to show great courage in order to take up the task, to the solution of which the greatest scientists devoted themselves: to determine the movement of various points of a rotating solid body - a gyroscope. Vladimir Onufrievich finally got confused in his financial affairs and committed suicide on the night of April 15-16, 1883. Kovalevskaya was in Paris (she was elected a member of the Paris Mathematical Society) when she learned of her husband's suicide. In early July, Sofya Vasilievna returned to Berlin. She was still weak after the shock, but inwardly quite collected. Weierstrass greeted her very cordially, asked her to live with him "as a third sister." Upon learning of the death of Kovalevsky, who objected to his wife's plans to make mathematics a matter of life, Weierstrass wrote to his colleague Mittag-Leffler that "now, after the death of her husband, there are no more serious obstacles to the fulfillment of his student's plan - to accept the position of professor in Stockholm", and was able to please Sophia with a favorable response from Sweden. On January 30, 1884, Kovalevskaya gave her first lecture at Stockholm University, after which the professors rushed to her, noisily thanking her and congratulating her on a brilliant start. The course given by Kovalevskaya in German was of a private nature, but he made her an excellent reputation. Late in the evening of June 24, 1884, Kovalevskaya learned that she had "been appointed professor for a term of five years." Sofya Vasilievna went deeper and deeper into the study of one of the most difficult problems of the rotation of a rigid body. “A new mathematical work,” she once told Yankovskaya, “is of keen interest to me now, and I would not want to die without discovering what I am looking for. If I succeed in solving the problem that I am working on, then my name will be listed among the names most eminent mathematicians. According to my calculation, I need another five years in order to achieve good results. " In the spring of 1886, Kovalevskaya received news of the serious illness of her sister Anyuta. She went to Russia and returned to Stockholm with a heavy feeling. Nothing could return to the previous work. Kovalevskaya found a way to talk about herself, her feelings and thoughts, and used it with passion. Together with the writer Anna-Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, she begins to write. Captured by literary work, Kovalevskaya was no longer able to deal with the problem of the rotation of a rigid body around a fixed point. Kovalevskaya had many friends, mostly in literary circles, but in her personal life she remained lonely. Sophia imagined the ideal relationship in this way: joint exciting work plus love. However, such harmony was difficult to achieve. Kovalevskaya was endlessly tormented by the realization that her work was a wall between her and the person to whom her heart should belong. Ambition prevented her from being just a loving woman. In 1888, the “Princess of Science”, as Kovalevskaya was called in Stockholm, nevertheless meets a person with whom she is trying to build a relationship similar to those she dreamed of. This person turns out to be a prominent lawyer and sociologist Maxim Kovalevsky, her namesake. Fate, as if on purpose, arranged such a coincidence. The friendship of the two scientists soon turned into something resembling love. They were going to get married, but due to Sophia's increased demands, their relationship became so confused that the feeling, without having time to gain height, suffered a complete collapse. Finally, Kovalevskaya returns to the problem of the rotation of a heavy rigid body around a fixed point, which reduces to integrating a certain system of equations that always has three definite algebraic integrals. In those cases when it is possible to find the fourth integral, the problem is solved completely. Before the discovery of Sofya Kovalevskaya, the fourth integral was found twice - by the famous researchers Euler and Lagrange. Kovalevskaya found a new one - the third case, and to it - the fourth algebraic integral. The complete solution was very complex. Only perfect knowledge of hyperelliptic functions allowed her to cope with the task so successfully. And so far, four algebraic integrals exist only in three classical cases: Euler, Lagrange, and Kovalevskaya. On December 6, 1888, the Paris Academy informed Kovalevskaya that she had been awarded the Borden Prize. In the fifty years that have passed since the inception of the Borden Prize "for improvement in some important point in the theory of motion of a rigid body," it has been awarded only ten times, and even then not completely, for particular solutions. And before the opening of Sophia Kovalevskaya, this prize was not awarded to anyone at all for three years in a row. On December 12, she arrived in Paris. The president of the academy, astronomer and physicist Jansen, congratulated Kovalevskaya and said that due to the seriousness of the research, the prize at this competition had been increased from three to five thousand francs. Scientists did not stint on applause. Sofya Vasilievna, somewhat stunned by her success, with difficulty mastered herself and uttered words of gratitude befitting the occasion. Kovalevskaya settled near Paris, in Sevres, and instructed Mittag-Leffler to bring her daughter to her. Here she decided to continue additional research on the rotation of rigid bodies for the competition for the Swedish Academy of Sciences. By the beginning of the autumn semester at the university, Sofya Vasilievna returned to Stockholm. She worked with a kind of desperate determination, finishing her research. She had to have time to submit it to the competition. For this work, Kovalevskaya was awarded the Swedish Academy of Sciences the King Oscar II Prize of one thousand five hundred crowns. Success did not please her. Not having time to truly rest, to receive treatment, she again tore her health. In this state, Sofya Vasilievna could not do mathematics and again turned to literature. With literary stories about Russian people, about Russia, Kovalevskaya tried to drown out her homesickness. After the scientific triumph that she had achieved, it became even more unbearable to wander in a foreign land. But there were no chances for a place in Russian universities. A ray of hope flashed after November 7, 1889, Kovalevskaya was elected a corresponding member at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In April 1890, Kovalevskaya left for Russia in the hope that she would be elected a member of the academy in place of the deceased mathematician Bunyakovsky, and that she would acquire the material independence that would allow her to engage in science in her country. In St. Petersburg, Sofya Vasilievna twice visited the President of the Academy, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, once had breakfast with him and his wife. He was very kind to the illustrious scientist and kept repeating how good it would be if Kovalevskaya returned to her homeland. But when she wished, as a corresponding member, to be present at a meeting of the academy, she was told that the presence of women at such meetings "is not in the customs of the academy"! A greater insult, a greater insult could not have been inflicted on her in Russia. Nothing has changed in the homeland after S. Kovalevskaya was awarded an academic title. In September she returned to Stockholm. She was very sad. January 29 (February 10), 1891, without regaining consciousness, Sofya Kovalevskaya died of heart failure, at the age of forty-one, in the prime of her creative life. Author: Samin D.K.
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