Sofya Kovalevskaya was born #OTD in 1850. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in modern Europe, be appointed to a university chair, and join the editorial board of a scientific journal. She also won the Prix Bordin from the French Academy of Science.

Sofya, who also went by Sonya, was born in Moscow. Her father was a nobleman who took the family from the city to a country estate.

She has quite an origin story: The family ran out of wallpaper, so they papered her room with calculus notes from her father’s time at university.

"These sheets, spotted over with strange incomprehensible formulae, soon attracted my attention. I passed whole hours before that mysterious wall, trying to decipher even a single phrase, and to discover the order in which the sheets ought to follow each other."

As a child she was given a physics book by a family friend. It required trigonometry, which she figured out on her own. The family friend, amazed by her ability, convinced Sofya’s father to arrange a private tutor.

She excelled at mathematics, but women were barred from Russian universities at the time. So she entered into a marriage of convenience with a young geology student and went with him to Heidelberg. She couldn’t enroll there either, but at least she could attend lectures.