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5: Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944): Mathematician, Artist, Mother
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Hello Everyone!
Grace Chisholm Young is extraordinary. I have spent the last four months submerged in this woman's life, reading her letters and writings at the University of Liverpool Library and beyond. I had the chance to do a project on her personal copy of her seminal book The Theory of Sets of Points, which she published jointly with her husband in 1906. This copy is held at the Whipple Library Special Collections at the University of Cambridge. It contains marginalia, inserted postcards and reviews, Grace's annotations revising the book for a second edition, and watercolours of her son Laurie. On top of being a skilled mathematician, Grace was talented in art and writing, ran a household and mothered six children. Up until now her life has been evaluated adjunct to her husband William's, as the two embarked on a mathematical partnership together, where most of their life works were published under William's name. I explore this partnership, but use Grace's annotated copy of The Theory of Sets of Points to try and better understand her lived experiences of life independent of William. I hope you enjoy!
Here are some references if you're interested in reading more:
Daston, Lorraine. 2004. Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. New York: London: Zone; MIT [distributor].
Davidoff, Leonore., and Catherine. Hall. 1987. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the Middle Class 1780-1850. S.l.]: Hutchinson.
Fara, Patricia. 2013. “Women in Science: Weird Sisters?” Nature 495, no. 7439: 43–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/495043a.
———. 2018. A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War. First ed.
Ferree, Myra Marx. 1990. “Beyond Separate Spheres: Feminism and Family Research.” Journal of Marriage and Family 52, no. 4: 866–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/353307.
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. 1972. ‘A Mathematical Union: William Henry and Grace Chisholm Young’. Annals of Science29, no. 2 (1 August 1972): 105–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033797200200431.
Hunt, Diann. 2007. For Better or for Worse. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Jones, Claire G. 2009. Femininity, Mathematics, and Science, 1880-1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Radway, Janice A. 1991. Reading the Romance Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Rothman, Patricia. 1996. ‘Grace Chisholm Young and the Division of Laurels’. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 50, no. 1: 89–100.
Secord, James A. 2006 “Scrapbook Science: Composite Caricatures in Late Georgian England,” in Figuring It Out: Science, Gender, and Visual Culture, ed. Ann B. Shteir and Bernard V. Lightman, 164-191. Dartmouth: Dartmouth College Press.
Topham, Jonathan R. 2000. ‘A textbook revolution’, in Frasca-Spada, M. and Jardine, N. (eds.), Books and the sciences in history (Cambridge).
Warwick, Andrew. 2003. Masters of Theory, Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wiegand, Sylvia. 1996. “Grace Chisholm Young and William Henry Young: A Partnership of Itinerant British Mathematicians,” in Creative Couples in the Sciences. Lives of Women in Science, edited by Abir-Am, Pycior, Slack, Abir-Am, Pnina G., Pycior, Helena M., and Slack, Nancy G., 126-140. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Woolf, Virginia. 1929. A Room of One's Own. London: Hogarth Press.
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