Which mathematician became the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in modern Europe, in 1874?

Sofia Kovalevskaya became the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in modern Europe, in 1874.

The University of Göttingen awarded Kovalevskaya a doctorate in absentia after she submitted three mathematical papers. One concerned partial differential equations, another examined the shape of Saturn’s rings, and a third addressed elliptic integrals.

Because European universities often barred women from formal study, Kovalevskaya had pursued education through private instruction and travel. She later became a professor at Stockholm University, where she was the first woman in Europe to hold a modern university mathematics professorship.

Her name appears in several mathematical terms, including the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem and the Kovalevskaya top. She is sometimes confused with Sophie Germain, an earlier pioneering woman mathematician who did not receive a university doctorate.