women
Mary Whiton Calkins Harvard: she passed her doctoral examination with distinction in 1895. Harvard refused the degree. She led two national learned societies anyway.
Elena Cornaro Piscopia Padua: the Venetian noblewoman who earned the world’s first female university degree in 1678, and the theology doctorate she was refused.
Héloïse abbess of the Paraclete governed her Champenois abbey for approximately thirty-five years from its foundation in 1129 until her death in 1163 or 1164, building a monastic community and a body of correspondence that placed her among the most significant women intellectuals of medieval Europe, though history has largely reduced her to the love
Introduction to Al-Qarawiyyin history 859 In 859, a woman whose name most histories have recorded only in passing made a decision that would shape scholarship for twelve centuries. Fatima al-Fihri, daughter of a Tunisian merchant who had died and left her his fortune, chose to spend the inheritance on a mosque and centre of learning
In the spring of 1895, Mary Whiton Calkins sat the doctoral examination at Harvard University. She had spent three years working through the philosophy and psychology curriculum, studying privately with William James and Josiah Royce because Harvard’s rules barred women from attending the university’s courses as enrolled students. She had written a dissertation. She had
