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“Solving mathematical problems gave me a unique sensation of freedom that did not depend on what happened around me,” confessed Irina Kmit, a Ukrainian mathematician, now a professor in the mathematics department at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research topics include hyperbolic differential equations and boundary value problems. And she described maths as a “language without borders.”
Prof. Kmit is among 20 women selected for a photographic exhibition titled ‘Women of Mathematics From Around the World’, which has travelled 170 countries and is now on show at the Science Gallery Bengaluru. The exhibition of women — from Congo to India — shows each mathematician against a blackboard filled end-to-end with equations.
‘Shameful disparity’
For Prof. Kmit, she had “not experienced obstacles due to the fact of being a woman.” But women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in most parts of the world, including India, are up against a formidable glass ceiling in the form of social pressure to start a family or due to institutional apathy.
For instance, according to the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, India, in 2024, had set a world record with a 40 per cent enrolment of women in STEM fields. But soon, they find a sharp attrition and the gender gap widening as they move up the academic ladder a paper published in Nature in 2024 found that women made up a mere 16.7 per cent of the STEM faculty in India.
The ‘Women in Math’ touring exhibition that started with a show in Berlin in 2016 stems from the observation that even today, “women find it difficult to embrace a career in the mathematical academic world and the disparity between the proportion of men and that of women among professional mathematicians is still shamefully large,” a press release read. The women portrayed here could also be “role models” for young women scientists “to trust their own strength”.
Neela’s story
The exclusive group of mathematicians chosen for this exhibition includes Neela Nataraj, the institute chair professor at the department of mathematics, IIT Bombay, who is now working on mathematical problems related to liquid crystals. Prof. Nataraj said she was “scared of mathematics” as a child. But by high school her proactive teachers boosted her confidence in the subject, which would chart her academic future.
Prof. Nataraj belonged to a “very conservative family”, where she was expected her to get married and find a stable job. She did marry in the first year of her PhD at the age of 23, and critical to her future academic trajectory was her supportive husband and his and her family and mentors. Her greatest joy is teaching, she said. Her research topics are numerical analysis, finite element methods and applied maths. “Nothing makes me happier than going into a class and teaching students,” she added.
But she did “face obstacles,” and added: “It totally depends on you whether you choose to view them as challenges to overcome or as difficulties that act as debilitating deterrents. It all depends on how you want to find ways to overcome them and bounce back. It depends on how passionate you are about the work and the mathematics you want to do.”
Yukari Ito, a mathematician from the University of Tokyo, began a “women’s lunch” where they didn’t necessarily discuss mathematics, but the women felt the need to meet “because we had less information than men who had more opportunities to communicate with each other, and had so much more information.”
She’s “happy when I discover new things,” said Prof. Ito, who specialises in algebraic geometry and the resolution of singularities. “It’s also very interesting to have different ideas than other people.” And she is most satisfied when teaching, especially “when I see that change in my students’ eyes or expressions, when they understand something.”
Discoveries as an addiction
Cornelie Mitcha Malanda, from Congo, said maths discoveries makes her feel like “a child ... who saw chocolate for the first time, and ... screamed in joy.” The subject is nothing short of “an addiction”. Prof. Malanda, a faculty member of science and technology at the Marien Ngouabi University, urged young women entering the field of mathematics to “trust” themselves: “Be convinced. Be more confident. You will face challenges, you will be down sometimes, you will cry, that’s true. But don’t give up.”
Earlier this month, a panel comprising the American-German photographer Noel Tovia Matoff, French mathematician and curator Sylvie Paycha, and physicist Sumati Surya reflected on how mathematics is produced “by people” rather than “abstractions”.
Jahnavi Phalkey, founding director of Science Gallery, said in a statement that she hoped the exhibition “will encourage young men to recognise women mathematicians as part of the intellectual landscape and for young women to fearlessly think of mathematics as their own, just as the women portrayed in the exhibition have been able to.”
The curator, Ms. Paycha, said that women worldwide researching mathematics and theoretical physics “are still scarce.” The purpose of the exhibition was “to make visible women of mathematics and theoretical physics from around the world and to encourage young women to embrace a career in mathematics and/or theoretical physics.”
‘Specific obstacles’
Ms. Matoff said of her decade-long project of portraying female mathematicians worldwide: “Even after 37 such sessions, I am still inspired by the passion with which female mathematicians explain, describe, and paint their theories on the blackboard.”
The portraits are presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of the of Germany, the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, and the Raman Research Institute. The exhibition will be open to the public until March 15 in the city.
The organisers expressed hope that presenting mathematics through women mathematicians’ perspectives and life stories will make this discipline more tangible and accessible to new entrants. “Entering the field of mathematics can be tough, and women often encounter specific obstacles.”
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