The Ada Lovelace day is a day to celebrate all women contributing in science.
On this occasion the first names coming to my mind are Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin.
But I wanted to pay a tribute to some of the first women of mathematics.
Going back in time, well before the great Sophie Germain and her pioneering work on prime numbers.
I believe almost everyone knows Hypatia from Alexandria and her work on conic sections. She was not only a mathematician but also a teacher and a philosopher of the end of the IVth century. There are plenty of web sources you can find with her history but I recommend you read her complete biography by Maria Dzielska.
A few centuries earlier, in the 6th century BC, Pythagoras accepted equally men and women in his school. Iamblichus cites 17 "illustrious Pythagorean women" (click to see the text).
The most famous is his wife, Theano, believed to be the first to study the golden ratio. She directed the school after Pythagoras death.
Damo, daughter of Pythagoras and Theano published the works of her father.
A woman was also the first teacher of Pythagoras, the priestess of Delphi, Themistokleia (click to read the text by Diogenes Laertius in "Lives of Eminent Philosophers").
It is difficult to attribute particular works to these Pythagorean women but clearly they actively participated and contributed to the school studies.
