Grace Chisholm Young

Born on 15 March 1868 near London, Grace Chisholm Young was an English mathematician and the first woman to receive a PhD in Germany. As a child, Young received no formal education, but rather was educated at home by her parents. In 1889 she was awarded a scholarship to study at Cambridge University’s Girton College, at the time the only school in England that accepted women at the university level. Although Girton could not confer formal degrees, Young earned the equivalent of a first-class degree in mathematics in 1892. Unable to pursue graduate studies in England, Young applied to the University of Göttingen in Germany, one of the major mathematical centers in the world, which had just established a course for women. Studying under renowned mathematician Felix Klein, Young earned her PhD, magna cum laude, in 1895. The following year she married William Henry Young, one of her former tutors at Girton. The couple lived and worked in Europe, where they undertook research on such topics as geometry and set theory. Together, they wrote more than 200 articles and several books. Grace Young is one of the namesakes of the Denjoy-Young-Saks theorem, which describes the derivatives of functions. She died at age 76 in 1944. (Photo courtesy of Sylvia Wiegand, CC BY-ND 2.0 )

Date in History: 15 March 1868