Tatyana Afanasyeva-Ehrenfest

Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva-Ehrenfest, born Tatyana Afanasyeva in Kiev in 1876, was a Russian-Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics with her husband Paul Ehrenfest. Because women were not allowed to attend universities in Russian territory, she studied mathematics and physics at the Women's University in St Petersburg under Orest Chvolson, and in 1902 she transferred to the University of Göttingen to continue her studies with Felix Klein and David Hilbert, where she met Paul Ehrenfest. They married on 21 December 1904 and in 1912 moved to Leiden, where they lived throughout their careers. One of their daughters, Tatyana Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician.