From Noether to Nightingale, University of Toronto course shines light on math’s women pioneers

As a young math student, Sarah Mayes-Tang was fascinated by the "little boxes" in her textbooks that described the lives and achievements of important mathematicians. Vignettes about Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gave her a glimpse into the history of landmark formulas and theorems. But rarely, if ever, did her course books discuss women's contributions to the field. And if they did, the coverage was often superficial. "In most books, they usually had the token woman," Mayes-Tang says. "It always felt very forced to me. I didn't spend much time thinking about this until later in graduate school and in my career." Now an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the University of Toronto's department of mathematics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Mayes-Tang is teaching a first-year seminar that focuses on often overlooked female math pioneers - focusing on mathematicians such as the German algebraist Emmy Noether.