Grace Chisholm Young was an English mathematician born on March 15, 1868 in Haslemere, England. Grace was born into a family of five which included her parents and her two siblings. Out of three surviving siblings, Grace was the youngest. The death of the fourth child is unknown. Grace had a huge interest in medicine but, her family was against it and did not approve of it. Her family encouraged her to do social work with the poor in London, England but, she decided to continue her interest in mathematics. Her main interest was on Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry. Her father, Henry William Chisholm, had an important position in the British government as the chief clerk. Her mother, Anna Louisa Bell, homeschooled Grace and her sister along with an governess. Her brother, Hugh Chisholm, was sent to grammar school and earned a top scholarship to Oxford. At the time, schools did not educate women which is why Grace was home schooled. …show more content…
Girton College was the first college that permitted educating women. Women were also not allowed to earn formal degrees at the time, but Grace scored equivalent to a first-class degree after taking an exam on mathematical tripos part I. Grace moved to Göttingen Germany due to the fact women could not graduate from college in England. Grace continued to study mathematics in Göttingen (one of the major mathematical centers in the world) on mathematical tripos part II. In 1895, Grace earned a PhD (at the age of 27) on Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry called “Algebraisch-gruppentheoretische Untersuchungen zur sphärischen Trigonometrie”. She then became the first woman to receive a PhD in