Charlotte Angas Scott, a pioneer | Tangente

Charlotte Angas Scott,

A pioneer of algebraic geometry and a specialist in curves and surfaces, British mathematician Charlotte Angas Scott was forced to move to the United States to find an academic post. Her chief claim to fame is an elegant proof she devised for a difficult theorem by Max Noether.

August 8, 1897, was a remarkable day in the history of the mathematical community. That Sunday in Zurich, Switzerland, two hundred mathematicians from around the world gathered in the recently completed concert hall to open the first International Congress of Mathematicians. German mathematician Adolf Hurwitz (1859–1919), a professor at ETH Zurich and one of the organizers, welcomed this learned gathering with a friendly "Hochverehrte auswärtige Kolleginen und Kollegen", meaning, in Molière's language, "dear colleagues from abroad"—but expressed in a strikingly inclusive way. Doubly striking, in fact: as the 19^th century drew to a close, little attention was paid to gender equality, and, above all, there were very few Kolleginen in the hall.

Charlotte Angas Scott (1858–1931).

Only four women attended! --------------------------------

Only four women attended this first congress. One of its youngest participants, Charlotte Wedell (1862–1953), came from the Danish nobility; she had just defended a thesis on elliptic functions at the University of Lausanne, under the unofficial supervision of… Adolf Hurwitz. The congress proceedings listed her as affiliated with the University of Göttingen, although she held no professional position there.