"A taste for the mysteries of numbers is excessively rare, but when a person of the sex which must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarize herself with these thorny researches, succeeds nevertheless in penetrating the most obscure parts of them, then without a doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius." - Gauss to Sophie Germain
"Female Mathematician"?? Sophie Germain deserves the use of her own name, as much as you wouldn't say "Male Mathematician" to refer to Fermat. Sophie Germain was one of the greatest mathematicians of all times.
Sophie Germain was one of the greatest mathematicians of all times.
Well, no. While the term "female mathematician" is oddly dismissive, Sophie Germain is nevertheless famous mainly because she was a woman who did mathematics. This isn't to diminish her remarkable achievements in the face of entrenched sexism, but she was hardly a great mathematician.
In fact, I'd hazard to guess that a plausible list of the 100 greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists (for most of history there was little distinction between the two) would contain at most two women (Emmy Noether and Maria Goeppert Mayer). I have a theory about why this is the case, but this comment box is too small to contain it.
