Elizabeth Stephansen

Mary Ann Elisabeth Stephensen (born March 10, 1872 in Bergen , Norway , † February 23, 1961 in Espeland, Norway) was a Norwegian mathematician . She was the first Norwegian to do a doctorate and taught in Oslo for 25 years .

life and work

Stephansen was the first of seven children of Gerche Jahn and the textile manufacturer Anton Stephansen. In 1887, she and two other girls began their education at the Katedralskole boys' school in Bergen. She studied natural sciences and received her degree in 1891. Women have been able to study at Norwegian universities since 1887, but they did not offer the training Stephansen was looking for. She decided to take the entrance exam for the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum in Zurich (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule). She received a scholarship from Queen Josefine and attended lectures by Hurwitz and Ferdinand Georg Frobenius in Zurich, among others . From 1894 to 1895 she helped her family set up a textile factory in Espeland near Bergen. After returning to Zurich, she graduated from the Polytechnic in 1896. She wanted to become a math teacher because women had acquired the right to become secondary school teachers in Norway in the exact year she graduated. Stephansen worked for two years from 1896 as a part-time teacher at her former school Katedralskole. She then taught four hours a week at Bergen Tekniske Skole for a year, and the students were amazed to be taught by a teacher. During this time she worked on her dissertation on partial differential equations. Leonhard Euler , Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert and Joseph-Louis Lagrange had investigated which partial differential equations of the second order could be reduced to the first order, and this was generalized by the Norwegian mathematician Alf Victor Guldberg , who in 1900 made all partial differential equations third And reduced to second order equations. In her dissertation, she generalized Guldberg's work and succeeded in describing all fourth-order partial differential equations that could be reduced to third-order equations. The problem resolved itself in a large number of cases, each of which had to be analyzed separately. Stephansen's dissertation on fourth order partial differential equations that have an intermediate integral was published in 1902. This year she received her doctorate from the University of Zurich because she was unable to do a doctorate at the Polytechnic. Ordinarius Burkhardt described her dissertation as of such high quality that she was awarded a doctorate in absentia and without an oral examination. With the award of a doctorate in mathematics, Stephansen became the first Norwegian to do a doctorate. After successfully applying for a travel grant from the Executive Committee of Royal Norwegian Frederik's University, she spent the winter semester of 1902/1903 at the Georg-August University in Göttingen , where she attended courses from David Hilbert , Felix Klein and Ernst Zermelo . She befriended Hilbert and visited his home on numerous occasions. In 1903 she published another paper on differential equations, the idea of which emerged from Hilbert's lecture course in which she participated. She returned to Norway and worked as a teacher at Olaf Berg's girls' school in Oslo. She continued to do mathematical research and wrote two more papers, this time on difference equations, which were published in 1905 and 1906. In 1906 she was appointed to the Norges Landbrukshoiskole (Norwegian Agricultural School) and worked there until her retirement in 1931. She taught mathematics and physics and was appointed lecturer in mathematics in 1921. After she retired in 1931, she lived in Espeland with her sister Gerda. On April 9, 1940, Adolf Hitler disregarded Norway's neutrality and ordered an invasion. The next day, German troops were in Bergen, many Norwegians were captured and held in a prison camp in Espeland. Stephansen was able to help the prisoners a lot through her fluent German and ignored the personal risks. After the end of the war she was awarded the royal medal for this

literature

"Mary Ann Elizabeth Stephansen," International Women in Science, Catherine Haines and Helen Stevens, Editors, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, 2001, pp. 296-298.
"Elizabeth Stephansen," Norwegian Biographical Encyclopedia (in Norwegian).
Hag, Kari; Lindqvist, Peter: Elizabeth Stephansen - A pioneer, Skrifter det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab 2, 1997.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Stephansen, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Stephansen, Mary Ann Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Norwegian mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	March 10, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bergen , Norway
DATE OF DEATH	February 23, 1961
Place of death	Espeland, Norway