Elizaveta Litvinova

Who was Elizaveta Litvinova?

Elizaveta Fedorovna Litvinova was a Russian mathematician and pedagogue. She is the author of over 70 articles about mathematics education.

Born in 1845 in czarist Russia as Elizaveta Fedorovna Ivanshkina, she completed her early education at a women's high school in Saint Petersburg. In 1866 Elizaveta married Viktor Litvinov, which, unlike Vladimir Kovalevskii, would not allow her to travel to Europe to study at the universities there. Thus, Litvinova started to study with Strannoliubskii, who had also privately tutored Kovalevskaya.

In 1872, as soon as her husband died, Litvinova went to Zürich and enrolled at a polytechnic institute. In 1873 the Russian czar decreed all Russian women studying in Zürich had to return to Russia or face the consequences. Litvinova was one of the few to ignore the decree and she remained to continue her studies, earning her baccalaureate in Zürich in 1876 and her doctoral degree in 1878 from the University of Bern.

When Litvinova returned to Russia, she was denied university appointments because she had defied the 1873 recall.