Liouba Bortniker

Liouba Bortniker (1860 – after 1903) was a mathematician from the Russian Empire who became a naturalized French citizen, was the first woman to earn an agrégation in mathematics, the inaugural winner of the Peccot–Vimont prize of the Collège de France, and the first woman to publish in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. She was known for her work on cyclides. Bortniker was born on 20 May 1860 (according to the Julian calendar; 1 June in the Gregorian calendar) in Alexandrovka, a town that was at the time part of the Russian Empire and later became part of modern Ukraine. Later records indicate that she was Jewish. She left her family to move to Paris in 1879, earned a baccalauréat in 1880, and earned a licenciate in mathematical sciences 1881 through the Paris faculty of sciences; her jury consisted of mathematicians Jean Claude Bouquet and Jules Tannery, and astronomer Félix Tisserand. She became an assistant teacher in Sèvres, and was granted residency in France in December 1881. She took a leave from this position in 1883 to continue her studies, under a scholarship, and in 1884 was deemed eligible to attempt the agrégation, the first time this was ever allowed for a woman. However, because of poor performance on the oral component of the examination, she did not pass. In June 1885 she became a French citizen and in July and August 1885 she attempted the agrégation again, this time passing as the second out of twelve passing scores from over 100 registrants. After Bortniker in 1885, it was not until 1920 that Madeleine Chaumont and Georgette Parize became the next women to receive the masculine agrégation, although by then an easier agrégation for women, aimed at teachers, had been introduced. Bortniker became a science teacher at the lycée de jeunes filles in Montpellier. In 1886 Bortniker was named the inaugural winner of the Peccot–Vimont prize, which would later develop into the Peccot Lectures. The next two winners of the prize, Jacques Hadamard and Elie Cartan, became famous research mathematicians, as did many later recipients.