Maths With Simi

Such a lovely testimonial from one of this year's students. Amazing student who was determined to succeeed but lacked in confidence. She just needed a little help understanding the AI HL course and figuring out what was being asked of her and she exceeded her own expectations 💜

I have a few online sessions available for KS3, GCSE and A level Maths in September. If your child needs support with Maths this year please do get in touch to discuss your exact requirements. You can send a DM or Whatsapp message using the button below.

Some great movies here. How many have you watched?

16 Beautiful Math Movies That Everyone Should Watch at Least Once in Their Life The existential philosopher Merleau Ponty says, “Film is not thought, it is perceived.”

5th post on our Women in Mathematics Series

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was the first major Russian female mathematician and a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world. She was the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe and was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor.

Despite her obvious talent for mathematics, she could not complete her education in Russia. At that time, women there were not allowed to attend universities. In order to study abroad, she needed written permission from her father (or husband). Together with her husband, she emigrated from Russia in 1867.

In Octoer 1870, she moved to Berlin, where she took private lessons with Karl Weierstrass, as the university would not even allow her to audit classes. In 1874 she presented three papers—on partial differential equations, on the dynamics of Saturn's rings and on elliptic integrals—to the University of Göttingen as her doctoral dissertation. With the support of Weierstrass, this earned her a doctorate in mathematics summa cm laude, bypassing the usual required lectures and examinations.

She thereby became the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her paper on partial differential equations contains what is now commonly known as the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem, which gives conditions for the existence of solutions to a certain class of those equations.

6th post on our Women in Mathematics series

Maria Gaetana Agnesi - She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university. She is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was a member of the faculty at the University of Bologna, although she never served.

She also studied the curve - the witch of Agnesi - which has got her name by mistake actually (find out more: http://bit.ly/3c7fLBG)