Laura Mole
DPhil Student
Research Topic: The cultural representation of women mathematicians in nineteenth-century Britain
Supervisor: Christopher Hollings
I am examining how women mathematicians were represented in literature, art and wider publications in nineteenth-century Britain. This period saw a radical change in both women's access to higher mathematics education and the possibilities for woman mathematicians with some examples of success including Mary Somerville, Ada Lovelace, Florence Nightingale and those taking the mathematics tripos at Cambridge through Girton College.
Publications
- ''High-gifted Somerville': poetic representations of a nineteenth-century woman mathematician', British Journal for the History of Mathematics, 2026
- 'Mathematical Ada: Poetry and Mathematics in the Nineteenth Century through representations of Ada Lovelace', VIDES, 2025
- Jung and Twentieth-Century Psychological Astrology: Perspectives on Magic, Psychology and Culture, Routledge, 2025
- 'Wordsworth's use of lunar symbolism: an early theory of poetic participation?' Culture & Cosmos, 2024
'The wisdom of the Stars: Dane Rudhyar's wise modernism', Culture & Cosmos, 2024
I read mathematics at the University of Bristol, and completed my first doctorate in cultural astronomy whilst working as an actuary. After a masters' in literature and arts at the University of Oxford, I decided to pursue a second doctorate in the history of women mathematicians, hence my current project.
