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Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow. Her father was Vasily Vasilievich Kriukovskoi (1800-1874), an artillery officer of Polish descent. He managed to convince the Russians to list him as descended of aristocracy, a Hungarian king in particular; in 1858 he was permitted to change his surname to Korvin-Krukovsky.
Her mother was Elizaveta Fyodorovna Schubert (1820-1879). She was granddaughter of Theodor Schubert aka Fyodor Ivanovich Schubert (mathematician and astronomer of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences) via Fyodor Fyodorovich Schubert (another Academician) and had more education and "appreciation of the finer things" than her husband.
Sofia Kovalevskaya contributed to the understanding of partial differential equationIn mathematics, and in particular calculus, a partial differential equation PDE is an equation involving partial derivatives of an unknown function. The idea is to describe a function indirectly by a relation between itself and its partial derivatives, ras and essentially completed the study of rotating solid s, applying the then-new theory of Abelian functions (and thus "justifying" the enormous effort that was put into the theory).
Kovalevskaya had a crush on Fyodor DostoevskyVasily Perov, 1872 Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky ( , sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky (FYOH-dahr dahs-tah-YEHVS-kee) (born November 11, ( October 30, Old Style), 1821, Moscow; died February 9, ( January 28, O. 1881, St. Petersburg, Russia), Russian w and practiced his favourite piano work, BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 d. March 26, 1827) was a German composer, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of all tim's Pathetique SonataLudwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, op. 13 was titled "Pathetique" by the composer himself, unlike most of the other "named" sonatas. It was published in 1799, though written the year before, when the composer was 27 years old. Beethoven, to get his attention, but he was focussed on the older sister Anna and he very probably proposed to her.
There seem to have been several roots to Sofia's mathematical bent. Some came from her father, accidentally; he had studied calculus in the army, and when they ran short of proper wallpaper for one house, used his old notes instead. Sofia spent many hours of childhood scrutinising the strange scribbles. Something of it seems to have stuck for when she later took calculus it came to her very quickly, as if it had always been there.
She adored her uncle Pyotr Vasilievich Krukovsky , a self-taught eccentric with especial fondness for mathematics.
While reading a book on opticsSee also list of optical topics. Optics is a branch of physics that describes the behavior and properties of light and the interaction of light with matter. Optics explains and is illuminated by optical phenomena. The field of optics usually describes the given to her by a family friend, she came across trigonometricTrigonometry (Greek: "the measure of triangles") is a branch of mathematics dealing with angles, triangles and trigonometric functions such as sine and cosine . It has some relationship to geometry, though there is disagreement on exactly what that relati concepts unfamiliar to her at the time, which she tried to explain on her own. She explained it in the same manner it was explained historically, and the friend was so impressed he implored Sophia's father to let her take private mathematical study, calling her "a new PascalBlaise Pascal ( June 19, 1623 August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. His contributions to the natural sciences include the construction of mechanical calculators, considerations on probability theory, studies of" in the process.
She died of tuberculosis in Stockholm and is interred there in the Norra begravningsplatsen.