Sonya Kovalevskaya had been an extraordinarily versatile and talented woman. With the greatest of ease she could turn from a lecture on Abel’s functions, to research on Saturn’s rings, to the writing of verse in French or a novel in Russian or a play in Swedish, to sewing a lace collar for her little daughter Fufi. In reply to a friend’s surprise at her involvement in literature as well as mathematics, she wrote, “Many who have never had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confound it with arithmetic and consider it an arid science. In reality however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination, and one of the leading mathematicians of our century states the case quite correctly when he says that it is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul. … one must renounce the ancient prejudice that a poet must invent something that does not exist, that imagination and invention are identical. It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing.” At the time of her death, Sonya Kovalevskaya was at the very height of her fame. By penetrating deeply into the methods of mathematical research, she had made brilliant discoveries. Her contributions are considered equal to those of any mathematician of her day by any of her colleagues who are qualified to judge.
