Women Mathematicians

Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth Magie was an American inventor and educator who invented the board game “The Landlord’s Game,” which was published in 1905 and was a precursor to Monopoly.

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Maria Wincklelmann Kirch

Maria Wincklelmann Kirch

Maria Winckelmann was a gifted German astronomer and the first woman to discover a comet. Even though her husband originally took credit for the discovery, he later admitted that she was the actual discoverer of the comet.

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Hypatia

Hypatia

Hypatia was born in Alexandria, Egypt circa 350–370, and died in 415 AD. She was known for her work in philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy and she is the first female mathematician whose life was well-documented.

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Rozsa Peter

Rozsa Peter

Rózsa was born Rózsa Politzer in Budapest, Hungary on February 17, 1905, and died on February 16, 1977. She later changed her name to Péter. She is considered one of the founders of the recursive function theory of mathematics.

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Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson is a mathematician who contributed to NASA in the early 1960s. She is best known for her work on the Mercury and Apollo programs, calculating the trajectories for manned spaceflights.

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Mary Jackson

Mary Jackson

Mary Jackson was the first African-American woman to work as an engineer at NASA. She was also a brilliant mathematician who helped design the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo 11 into space.

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Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper is a computer scientist, mathematician, and a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. She was born on December 9th, 1906 in New York City.

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Julia Robinson

Julia Robinson

Julia Robinson was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1919 and died in Oakland, California in 1985. Her area of exploration in mathematics was decision problems. 

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Wang Zhenyi

Wang Zhenyi

Wang Zhenyi was a mathematician and scientist from the Qing Dynasty, who broke the customs of the era by becoming educated in math, medicine, and astronomy. 

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Theano

Theano

Theano of Croton is usually given the title of the first woman mathematician. We don’t know very much about her.  However, she is believed to be the wife of Pythagoras…

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Marie Curie

Marie Curie

A scientist who had a major impact on the field of science, Marie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she was the first ‘person’ to win two Nobel Prizes.

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