ponedeljek, 23. marec 2009

Ada Lovelace Day - Милева Марић

I subscribed the Ada Lovelace Day pledge and thus here I am writing on my blog about woman in technology. But, being Dag, I choose my approach to this.
* http://findingada.com
* http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay
* http://twitter.com/FindingAda
* http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada
* http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47550446005


Mileva Marić (1875 - 1948) was born in Titel, Serbia. In 1891 her father obtained special permission to enroll Marić as a private student at the all male Royal Classical High School in Zagreb. She passed the entrance exam and entered the tenth grade in 1892. She won special permission to attend physics lectures in February 1894 and passed the final exams in September 1894. Her grades in mathematics and physics were the highest awarded. That year she fell seriously ill and decided to move to Switzerland, where on the 14th November she started at the "Girls High School" in Zurich. In 1896 she started studying medicine at the University of Zurich for one semester. In the winter of 1896, Marić switched to the Zurich Polytechnic (later Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)). She enrolled for a diploma course to teach physics and mathematics in secondary schools at the same time as Albert Einstein. She was the only woman in her group of six students, and only the fifth woman to study mathematics and physics at the Polytechnic.
(vir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Mari%C4%87)

The work of her husband, Albert Einstein, is known worldwide and will remain in history, not only in history of science.
Her work will not. Because there isn't any. She, on the other hand, never published anything... (ibid)
She is eventually mentioned in relation to Einstein only because The question whether (and if so, to what extent) Marić contributed anything at all to Einstein's Annus Mirabilis Papers is controversial. However, the overwhelming consensus, among professional historians of science, is that she did not. (ibid)
I really don' care if she contributed a single iota to her husband's work. The real point is, what the science has lost because of her marriage to Einstein to become only and just a wife and mother? She most certainly was an extraordinary mind just to enter the all-male world of physics (oh yes, that reminds me, all the "professional historians of science" that claim her non-contribute are all-male and only a woman historian - I know I probably should say herstorian, but I don't like the word - supports the idea that Mileva helped Albert developing his (their?) theories).
In my opinion isn't that important what she have done, but what she couldn't do - only for being a woman.

2 komentarja:

  1. Various oppinions about Mileva's contribution to Einstein's work. A lot of people think that she was really the genius but she choose to take care of her family instead to become a famous scientist.
    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=102011745470&ref=ts

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