GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: WANG ZHENYI, 1768-1797. Born at a time when Neo-Confucianism, a conservative strain of social philosophy, was ascendant, Zhenyi (Wang is the family name) had a lot of societal strictures to overcome to become a woman of mathematics and science. 1/8
She grew up in the family of a former district governor, which gave her access to a family library and let her become largely self-educated. Her need to understand on her own, without formal teachers, and the skills she developed as an autodidact allowed her to re-write and 2/8
simply dozens of mathematical proofs. She wrote primers and papers for laypeople describing mathematical and scientific ideas, including gravity and explaining why nobody falls off the Earth despite its spheroid shape. Her scientific achievements include calculating and 3/8
proving the movements of equinoxes. She also conducted her own experiments to study lunar eclipses. At a time and in a region before calculus was widely known, she mastered trigonometry on her own and wrote about it, including for laypeople. An admirer of Mei Wending, a 4/8
mathematician from the early Qing dynasty, she re-wrote his book into simpler language to make it accessible to those who, like her, were denied formal education. In addition to her extensive personal study and writing about mathematics, with the passion to make mathematics 5/8
accessible to the masses, she also wrote poetry still remembered today. She married at age 25 but had no children. The marriage was short, ending with her death at age 29, but by all accounts happy. She and her husband supported each other's interests, feeding her belief that 6/8
"men and women are all people, who have the same reason for studying." As she wrote in one of her poems, "It's made to believe/Women are the same as Men;/Are you not convinced,/Daughters can also be heroic?" Mathematician, poet, and astronomer who found a way to learn when 7/8
every aspect of the world around her told her she shouldn't, Zhenyi will long be remembered. 8/8 #GWOM
Picture is from the amazing Women in Science postcard set by artist @ignotofsky!
