person
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya
Kovalevskaya
also: Ковалевская, Sofia Kovalevsky, Sonya Kovalevskaya
Russian mathematician (1850-1891), the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate in mathematics and to hold a university professorship (at Stockholm); she died of influenza on 29 January 1891, two days before this letter, and is mourned here by the unnamed woman astronomer Chekhov describes meeting.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 31 January 1891. Moscow. §3 She's grieving that Kovalevskaya has died
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya, the mathematician -- the first woman in Europe to hold a doctorate in mathematics and a university professorship -- had died of influenza in Stockholm on 29 January 1891, just two days before this letter; the unnamed woman astronomer's grief registers how quickly the news had reached Moscow's scientific and literary circles.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 23 February 1891. Moscow. §6 The astonishing astronomer-lady
An unnamed acquaintance -- evidently the same "marvelous woman astronomer" Chekhov mentioned meeting three weeks earlier, there already linked to grief over Sofia Kovalevskaya's death -- has now finished her French lessons with Chekhov and left for Petersburg. The joke turns on that same juxtaposition: Kovalevskaya, the era's most famous woman scientist, had just died (29 January 1891), and Chekhov teases that her "laurels" (i.e., the fame of a woman succeeding in a scientific field) are keeping this astronomer-lady "awake" -- driving her, he speculates, to enroll in the Higher Women's Courses (Bestuzhev Courses) in pursuit of the same kind of academic career. The nickname "astronomer" itself appears to be a private joke about her hobby or aspiration rather than an actual profession.