REMARKABLE ABILITY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10237, 4 January 1894, Page 6

REMARKABLE ABILITY.

(New Xovk Sun.) Another epoch in the history of woman’s strivings for the highest educational privileges, -adventages ami honours " has just been '[marked by the entrance of Mrs Arthur Davia, of Washington, into competition at Johns Hopkins University for the .degree of Doctor of Philosophy. She has been ; enrolled a member or the postgraduate, claes, and will taka the prescribed course, although even should she stand above all in the examinations she imay'never 1 receive the degree nor the SOOdols, both of which, may go to another below lior in success, but who will happen to be of .male sax. She will bo. handicapped, too, as no male student over was, for she will have three small children, the youngest not yet three months - old, to .look .after while she is pursuing her arduous studies, and she purposes todo her whole duly by her family. And there is every indication, from her past remarkable successes, that ehe will triumph even as did Miss Philippa Garrett Fawcett in the Cambridge mathematical tripos three years ago. It ia pure love of the moat difficult and accounted the driest of the exact sciences, that is urging her in the undertaking, and no moro desire for the honour that would be hers in achievement of so difficult a feat.

Mrs Davis is just thirty years old. All her life, since she first went to school, she has shown remarkable mathematical ability. Her teachers at school and her professors at the Columbian University thought her a prodigy. Sfto competed with a number of men mathematicians for a high place in the Nautical Almanac Office several years ago, routed them all in three hours, aad in two more had solved all the difficult problems of higher mathematics and astronomy submitted to her, was pronounced by the enthusiastic examiners " 100-100,” mors than perfect, aad got the place. She was than Miaa Elizabeth Preston Brown, of Front Royal, Va. She has read the proofs ami verified tha problems for several of Professor Gore’s cud Professor Newcombe’s most difficult, work.?. For several years she has had the Government’s contract to calculate the ephemeris of the sun, and still holds it. She calculates tho orbits of new comets discovered by Professor Hewoombe and of those discovered at tha Lick Observatory, and high commendation for her unusual mathematical ability has been accorded to her by tho Astronomical Journal. Among her minor achievements ohe discovered and corrected an error in orie of the tables of La Place, which has been causing constant inaccuracies. Her husband is a member of the Geological survey, aad is engaged in work in Southern California, which will keep him there most of tho time his wife is studying at Johns Hopkins. Ha sympathises with her ambition.

The result of her efforts and experiments at Johns Hopkins will be looked for with interest. It will ba recalled that Miss Fawcett carried off tho highest mathematics! honours at Cambridge in 1890, ranking before tha senior wrangler, who was one of the moat distinguished mathematicians in England. She, 'however, gained no fellowship, no pecuniary reward and received no degree, because she was a woman. Perhaps Johns Hopkins may be more generous or more just, if Mrs Davis succeeds as ehe hopes.