Charlotte Wedell

Charlotte Bolette Sophie, Baroness Wedell-Wedellsborg (27 January 1862 – 22 July 1953)[1] was one of four women mathematicians to attend the inaugural International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Zurich in 1897.[2][3]

Wedell was originally from Denmark,[4] the daughter of Vilhelm Ferdinand, Baron Wedell-Wedellsborg [da] (of the Wedel noble family) and Louise Marie Sophie, Countess Schulin, and the granddaughter of Johan Sigismund Schulin (1808–1880) [da].[1] At the time of the Congress, in 1897, she had just completed a doctorate at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, with Adolf Hurwitz as an unofficial mentor.[5] The subject of her dissertation was the application of elliptic functions to the construction of the Malfatti circles.[4][6]

At the congress, Wedell was listed as being affiliated with the University of Göttingen. The other three women at the congress were Iginia Massarini, Vera von Schiff, and Charlotte Scott. None were speakers; the first Congress with a woman as a speaker was in 1912.[3]

Wedell married engineer Eugène Tomasini in Copenhagen in 1898; they divorced in 1909.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Skeel-Schaffalitzky, Santasilia, Charlotte Bolette Sophie baronesse Wedell-Wedellsborg, retrieved 2018-03-21. Source listed as "Danmarks Adels Aarbog, Thiset, Hiort-Lorenzen, Bobé, Teisen., (Dansk Adelsforening), [1884–2011]., DAA 1997–99:581, 95 b."
  2. ^ Curbera, Guillermo (2009), Mathematicians of the World, Unite!: The International Congress of Mathematicians—A Human Endeavor, CRC Press, p. 16, ISBN 9781439865125
  3. ^ a b Eminger, Stefanie Ursula (2015), Carl Friedrich Geiser and Ferdinand Rudio: The Men Behind the First International Congress of Mathematicians (PDF), Doctoral dissertation, University of St. Andrews
  4. ^ a b Catalogue des écrits académiques suisses, Volumes 1–6, Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek, 1898, p. 43
  5. ^ Fenster, Della Dumbaugh (1994), Leonard Eugene Dickson and His Work in the Theory of Algebras, Doctoral dissertation, University of Virginia, p. 109, Hurwitz officially advised twenty-one Ph.D. students. He also encouraged Charlotte Wedell in her 1897 doctorate at the University of Lausanne.
  6. ^ Wedell, Charlotte (1897), Application de la théorie des fonctions elliptiques à la solution du problème de Malfatti, Doctoral dissertation, University of Lausanne