The trip across the Atlantic on the S.S. Westernland was a pleasant one. Arriving in Antwerp, Mary took the train to Brussels, Cologne, and then to Göttingen.
Professor Klein was still in the U.S. upon her arrival in Germany and had arranged Mary's lodgings with a boarding house owner, Fraulein Scholte. She wrote home on October 15th that her first week in Europe had passed very pleasantly. Mrs. Klein had taken her around the university where she met Dr. Ritter, Professor Klein's assistant.
He spoke in German, showing Mary the geometric models and calculating machines. Mary wrote "'I understood every word he said. Of course it was only very simple things which he said, but it was encouraging to find that I understood them.'" Following that was a visit with Professor Voigt, the Prorector, and Professor Weber of the mathematics department.
When Klein arrived from the U.S., he visited Mary's boarding school with an application form for the Ministry of Education. She was to complete it so it could be sent to Berlin with two others--both young ladies, one in mathematics and one in physics.
In the meantime, they would be admitted to lectures. Klein explained the ladies were to go to his private office before the regular time for changing classes to avoid meeting students in the halls, and when the lectures began, they could go into class. They were, at that time, not official students.
Grace Chisholm, who had arrived from London, was the other young woman seeking admission in mathematics and she and Mary became close friends. Of Grace, Mary claimed, "'She has read more mathematics than I have, I think. We are to have nearly the same work and I think we will work together a good deal.'"
In this letter, Mary was also quick to caution her family. "'You had better not say much about the matter of our admission here until it is certain. If it should get into the American papers in any exaggerated form it might do us harm here. One cannot be too careful.'"
Her cautionary attitude soon changed, however, as one week later she again wrote home:
I will proceed to the fact which is uppermost in my mind and which you will probably know before you receive this--that I received this morning the official permission to study in the University at Göttingen. I say you probably know it already, for Miss Chisholm telegraphed it to her brother in London this morning. He is the subeditor of the St. James Gazette and she expects it to be published there tomorrow afternoon and thinks it will probably be copied into the American papers the next day.
Also in her letter, she recounted the first lecture she and Miss Chisholm attended with Professor Klein, saying, "'We were a little amused at the close of the lecture when he started to say 'die Herren' [the gentlemen] and corrected himself and said 'Mitglieder' [members]. He looked back at us and smiled.'"
By November, Mary expected to read a paper in front of the seminary within six weeks' time, and life in Germany was running smoothly. Life was certainly not all study, however. She wrote in early December that all the students in Professor Klein's seminary were invited to supper at his home, claiming that the occasion was a regular one that he "'gives every semester.'" However, this would be the first time there were ladies in attendance other than Mrs. Klein.
Following the dinner, about three weeks later, Mary presented her paper--entitled "The Connectivity Formulas of the Principal Branches of the P-Function"--in the seminary. Of the experience, she wrote, "'...It is altogether a sufficiently difficult thing to write and read a paper in a strange language before such a gathering as Prof. Klein's Seminary before such a man as Prof. Klein without the added difficulty of being the first woman to do it in the University. So altogether I have not done much else in the last two weeks..'" To her family, she wrote that the presentation had went reasonably well and "'I cannot say that I cast much honor on the feminine sex thereby, but on the other hand I do not think that anyone will draw the conclusion from it that women cannot learn Mathematics.'"
When not completing schoolwork, Mary enjoyed taking walks around the city wall or around town with friends. She also indulged in a new pair of skates to occupy her free time. Her move to a new boarding house in January was also beneficial as all the boarders were German, so the language was spoken much more frequently. This came to be a good influence on Mary's use of German.
In February, Mary decided that she wanted to stay in Germany for another year to see if she could finish a degree. She did not want to use family funds, though, wanting her siblings' needs to be met as well. "'I do not want to stay if it is going to cramp anyone else.'" Mary planned to return home to find a teaching position if another year in Germany was not feasible.
A few months later, in August 1894, Mary's discouragement was met with a note from Professor Klein. He had reviewed her solution to a problem he had given her earlier. Mary wrote, "'He says it is quite correct and says I ought to have it published.'" The encouragement from Klein was much needed. Her "Note on the Theory of the Hypergeometric Function" was published later that fall in the German mathematics journal, Mathematische Annalen.
Not everything went so smoothly for Mary, however, as she wrote of a setback she experienced in March 1895. While Professor Klein had been ill, she had completed three weeks' worth of work in another direction than he had anticipated. The section then had to be reworked.
During the summer, she continued work on her thesis. Entitled "Über den Hermiteschen Fall der Laméschen Differentialgleichung" (Hermite's case of Lamé's differential equation), her work was sixty-three pages of discussion of various cases. She used different assumptions to "unfold the geometrical relationships inherent in the solutions of the equation." The real curves of thirty-two different cases were then graphed by hand, including graphs of the ground-level path of a gyroscope and of a spherical pendulum.
Mary completed her thesis by the end of December and was then ready for the oral examination given to determine the depth of knowledge gained by the student in all disciplines studied while at Göttingen. The exam was the determining factor for awarding degrees. For Mary specifically, the disciplines included mathematics, physics, and astronomy.
After the red tape had unraveled in Berlin, the date for the exam was set: July 31, 1896. Mary passed with highest honors, Magna cum Laude, and the wife of Professor Voigt gave a dinner in her honor with many faculty members from the departments of mathematics and physics in attendance.
Despite passing her exam with flying colors, Mary's dissertation had to be printed before her degree could be granted. Since they were nearing the end of the summer, Professor Klein suggested that she take it with her back home to have it printed in the U.S. She and Annie MacKinnon sailed home, hoping to find jobs for the fall term.
Since her dissertation had not yet been published upon her return to the States, Mary could not claim to be the recipient of a Ph.D., which made finding work difficult. During her years in Germany, she had written home many times, writing about her hopes of finding a university appointment. Her family event assisted in her job search, looking for positions at Chicago, Stanford, and elsewhere.
But now there was no place for a woman who had earned a Ph.D. from Göttingen. She was beginning her long battle for the equality of women in the academic profession, battling against the belief that women were not suited to positions as professors at institutions of higher education.
Always optimistic and patient, Mary accepted a last resort position at St. Joseph High School in Missouri teaching mathematics and German. And there was her dissertation to consider.
Mary was dismayed as no printer in the United States could manage the German symbols in her thesis. Despite setbacks in finding work in the States, she sent it back to Germany for printing, and her work was published in 1897, with her degree being finally granted on June 30, 1897. This came eleven months after she had passed her examination and eighteen months after she had finished work on her dissertation.
Mary was finally Dr. Winston.
The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862
