Dear Elisabeth,

Abstract

You seem to have lived and breathed math since girlhood, tutored first by a game theorist who would have taught you probability theory. Do you realize how fortunate you were to have had such an opportunity in your youth? How modern that was? Many young girls today are discouraged, by parents and teachers alike, from doing math and science because those are said to be difficult “masculine” fields. You were launched early, then known in 1733 as ...