Sofia Kovalevskaya - Last Years in Germany and Sweden

Last Years in Germany and Sweden

In the early 1880’s, Sofia and her husband Vladimir developed financial problems. Sofia wanted to be a lecturer at the university; however, she was not allowed to because she was a woman, even though she had the same amount of knowledge in mathematics as men. Sofia had even volunteered to provide free lectures and she was still denied the right. Soon after, Vladimir started business management and Sofia became his assistant. They built houses as well as fountains to become financially stable again for a short period of time. In 1879, the price for mortgages became higher than the amount of money they made. They lost all their money again and became bankrupt. Shortly after, Vladimir got a job offer and Sofia helped neighbours to electrify street lights. Vladimir and Sofia quickly established themselves again financially. The Kovalevskys returned to Russia, but failed to secure professorships because of their radical political beliefs. Discouraged, they went back to Germany. Vladimir, who had always suffered severe mood swings, became more unstable so they spent most of their time apart. Then, for some unknown reason, they decided to spend several years together as an actual married couple. During this time their daughter, Sofia (called “Fufa”), was born. After a year devoted to raising her daughter, Kovalevskaya put Fufa under the care of her older sister, resumed her work in mathematics and left Vladimir for what would be the last time. In 1883, faced with worsening mood swings and the possibility of being prosecuted for his role in a stock swindle, Vladimir committed suicide.

That year, with the help of the mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, whom she had known as a fellow student of Weierstrass', Kovalevskaya was able to secure a position as a privat-docent at Stockholm University in Sweden.

The following year (1884) she was appointed to a five year position as "Professor Extraordinarius" (Professor without Chair) and became the editor of Acta Mathematica. In 1888 she won the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Science, for her work on the question: "Mémoire sur un cas particulier du problème de le rotation d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, où l'intégration s'effectue à l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du temps". Her submission included the celebrated discovery of what is now known as the "Kovalevsky top", which was subsequently shown (by Liouville) to be the only other case of rigid body motion, beside the tops of Euler and Lagrange, that is "completely integrable".

In 1889 she was appointed Professor Ordinarius (Professorial Chair holder) at Stockholm University, the first woman to hold such a position at a northern European university. After much lobbying on her behalf (and a change in the Academy's rules) she was granted a Chair in the Russian Academy of Sciences, but was never offered a professorship in Russia.

Kovalevskaya wrote several non-mathematical works as well, including a memoir, A Russian Childhood, plays (in collaboration with Duchess Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler) and a partly autobiographical novel, Nihilist Girl (1890).

She died of influenza in 1891 at age forty-one, after returning from a pleasure trip to Genoa. She is buried in Solna, Sweden, at Norra begravningsplatsen