Grace Chisholm Young March 15, 1868 - March 29, 1944 Grace Chisholm Young was born on March 15, 1868, near London, England. She was the youngest of three surviving children. Her father was Warden of the Standards in the British government, in charge of the department of weights and measures. Her brother was sent to grammar school, a prestigious boarding school, and then earned a top scholarship to Oxford, but in the custom of the times in England, Grace and her sister were taught at home by their mother and a governess. Her family encouraged her to become involved in social work among the London poor but Chisholm wanted to continue her studies. Her mother would not allow her to study medicine so she decided to study mathematics at Girton College, part of Cambridge University. Girton, opened in 1869, was the first school in England dedicated to educating women at the university level. Chisholm entered Girton in 1889 at the age of 21. Women could not earn formal degrees at Cambridge at that time, but in 1893 she passed her final examinations (Mathematics Tripos) and scored the equivalent of a first-class degree. Chisholm wanted to continue in mathematics but women were not yet admitted to graduate schools in England so she went to Gottingen in Germany to study with Felix Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centers in the world. The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture. She earned the Ph.D. magna cum laude at the age of 27. Again government approval had to be obtained to allow her to take the examination. She thus became the first woman to officially receive a doctorate in any field in Germany. As Sylvia Wiegand writes in [5] | |
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