Biography
Charlotte Angas Scott was born in Lincoln, UK, on 8 June 1858, and died on 10 November 1931 in Cambridge, UK.
Brilliant mathematician, specializing in analytical geometry, as well as co-editor of the magazine "American Journal of Mathematics" and co-founder of the American Mathematical Society, of which she was vice-president. She stands out above all as a key figure in women's access to training and careers in mathematics.
She was raised in a reformist Christian family. Her father was an advocate of women's education, so her interest in mathematics was encouraged by her father, who enabled her access to this subject at the early age of 7. He provided her with private tutors, as the education of women was not regulated in those days.
When she was 18, in 1876, she won a scholarship to Hitchin College, which would be soon renamed Girton College of the Cambridge University.
Four years later, she was given a special permission so that she could sit the famous Maths Tripos Exam by Cambridge, which were exclusively for men. She came eighth on the honour list, "8th Wrangler", but due to her sex, the title was not given to her and she was not allowed to attend their graduation ceremony. In the report of the 1880 graduation ceremony it is recorded: The man read out the names and when he was about to reach the eighth, before he could say it, all the students shouted "Scott of Girton", clapping and repeating her name over and over again, accompanied with a tremendous cheer and waving of hats.
Following this incident, a petition was sent to Cambridge University to grant women the right to sit the exams and graduate. This petition was signed by over 8000 people in 3 months. From then on, women were allowed to sit the "Tripos" and receive a special certificate stating their score and their place on an all-female list, but it was not until 1948 that they were granted the right to obtain the honours degree that men received. This did not prevent another woman, Philippa Garrett Fawcett (4th of April 1868 – 10th of June 1948) from making history a few years later, in 1890, by scoring 13% higher in the "Tripos" than that year's "Senior Wrangler", the highest score.
Scott continued at Girton, where she began her research career in algebraic geometry (her mathematical speciality was the study of specific algebraic curves of degree greater than two) under Cayley's supervision. This enabled her to obtain her PhD in 1885. However, her Science degree in 1882 as well as her PhD in 1886 were given by the University of London, both with honours (the highest grade). The effects of this great achievement in a male-dominated field did not go unnoticed. From that moment on, female residents were able to take the Cambridge exams as well as having their names publicly announced with the men.
She played lawn tennis and introduced the women's game when she was at Girton, unusual at the time for women. She was the winner of the Girton and Newnham Lawn silver cup in tennis doubles in 1883.
In 1885, Bryn Mawr College was founded in Pennsylvania, the first institution of higher education in the USA to allow graduate training for women.
On Cayley's recommendation, Scott went to work there and became the first head of the Mathematics Department at Bryn Mawr. As such, she established the arithmetic, algebra and plane geometry requirements that were instituted in 1885 for admission to Bryn Mawr College, University of Pennsylvania, USA. She also urged the University to hold an entrance examination, which was finally instituted in 1901 and continues today, of which she was Chief Examiner in 1902 and 1903.
During this period, she supervised the doctoral theses of many pioneering women mathematicians. Of the nine women who received their PhD in mathematics in the 19th century, three studied with her.
Scott was always in favour of teaching women as rigorously as men.
Charlotte created the Bryn Mawr College Mathematics Journal Club, which was designed to provide a meeting place for PhD students, recent graduates and staff members to give lectures on their recent mathematical research or on mathematical articles they had been reading and considered important.
In 1891 she was the first woman to become a member of the New York Mathematical Society - in 1894 it would become state-chartered and renamed the American Mathematical Society - and thus became the only woman to sit on the Council of the Society from its inception.
In 1894 she published an important textbook “An Introductory Account of Certain Modern Ideas and Methods in Plane Analytical Geometry” which was again printed 30 years later and is still widely used.
She was one of only four women who attended the first International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich in 1897. The other three were Iginia Massarini, Vera von Schiff and Charlotte Wedell.
In 1899 she became co-editor of the "American Journal of Mathematics", the oldest journal in the field of mathematics in the West, where she published numerous articles, a position she held until 1926, when she returned permanently to her native England.
It should also be highlighted that she is credited with being the author of the first work on mathematical research paper written in the United States and widely known in Europe, "A Proof of Noether's Fundamental Theorem”, (1899). Theorem elaborated by the German mathematician Emmy Noether, who is considered David Hilbert Albert Einstein and other characters like the most important woman in the history of maths.
In 1906 she developed an acute case of rheumatoid arthritis which, together with her increasing deafness, limited her physically. On medical advice about the benefits of outdoor exercise for her ailments, Scott took up gardening, where she received several awards and succeeded in developing a new variety of chrysanthemum.
In 1924 she retired at the age of 67, but she stayed on at Bryn Mawr for a while longer to help her last PhD student complete her thesis. Only after she came back to the UK and settled in Cambridge until her death in 1931.
In the 40 years Charlotte Angas Scott spent in the USA, she achieved great professional success: she organized the undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics at Bryn Mawr, published more than 30 articles in journals around the world, as well as taking an active part in academic life and professional societies.
Extracted from Wikipedia (04/01/2022) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Scott>
Extracted from Mujeres con ciencia (04/01/2022) <https://mujeresconciencia.com/app/uploads/2015/06/Charlotte-Angas-ScottFicha.pdf>
