194 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



geometricians who honored our country at the commence- 

 ment of this century. It is but a few years since the 

 Academy awarded one of its most beautiful prizes which 

 will place the name of Mme. Kovalevsky beside those of 

 Euler and Lagrange in the history of discoveries relative 

 to the theory of the movement of a solid body about a fixed 

 point. . . . And you, mademoiselle, your thesis is the first 

 which a woman has presented and successfully defended 

 before our faculty for the degree of doctor in mathematics. 

 You worthily open the way, and the faculty unanimously 

 makes haste to declare you worthy of obtaining the degree 

 of doctor." 



Besides her thesis just referred to, Miss Klumpke is the 

 author of numerous communications to scientific journals 

 and learned societies regarding her researches on the 

 spectra of stars and meteorites and other allied subjects. 

 For many years she was at the head of the bureau in the 

 Paris Observatory for measuring the photographic plates 

 that are to be used in the large catalogue of stars and map 

 of the heavens which are to constitute the crowning achieve- 

 ments of the International Astronomical Congress. She 

 was the first woman to be elected a member of the Astro- 

 nomical Society of France, and the character of her work 

 as an observer as well as a computer has given her an en- 

 viable position among the astronomers of the world. 1 



In America another woman has won renown among 

 astronomers by successfully executing the same kind of 



iMiss Klumpke, the reader may be interested in knowing, be- 

 longs to a singularly gifted family. Her sister, Augusta, is a dis- 

 tinguished physician and an authority on nervous diseases. Hers is 

 the glory to be the first woman permitted, after an exceptionally 

 severe examination, to serve as interne in the Paris hospitals. Julia, 

 her youngest sister, who achieved distinction as a violinist with 

 Ysaye, was one of the first to pass the examination required of 

 women entering the Paris Lycees, while Anna, the eldest, has won 

 fame as an artist, and as the friend, heiress and executrix of France's 

 famous daughter, Eosa Bonheur. 



