“Women are made to believe that women are equal to men – aren’t you convinced that daughters can also be heroic?” -Wang Zhenyi
“A woman genius, and better than Da Vinci? Impossible!” is what a regular reader would think. But as you read the rest of the story, you will understand why your prejudices have no place in reality, and that you are unaware of one of the greatest minds of all time, Wang Zhenyi.
Among her intellectual achievements as an astronomer is demonstrating the movement of the equinoxes and their exact calculation. Her tireless observation of the Solar System made her compile studies on the planets and the luminous star. Among the twelve books she wrote in this field of knowledge are; On Longitude and the Stars, as well as, On the Explanation of Lunar Eclipses, and the On Procession of the Equinoxes.
During Wang Zhenyi’s childhood, which occurred during the early Qing Dynasty in China in the 18th century, no woman had the right to education. Their only permitted occupation was to take care of the household and their husbands. However, the family she grew up in had a deep inclination for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
The little girl lived her first years surrounded by books about science and art, which fed her genuine curiosity for the world where her feet rested. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either. Zhenyi would not resign herself to staying at home while her life was spent playing the role that society forced her to act. If there were no ways to prepare, they would have to be invented. Thus she autonomously nourished her mind and spirit with the material available to her.
She knew the Pythagorean Theorem to perfection and had a perfect understanding of trigonometry and arithmetic. The enormous capacity she had for these spheres of knowledge and her writing facility, led her to condense all that knowledge in various texts where she broke down all the basic mathematical concepts.
Love came as a surprise and, sadly, her marriage was the engine that raised her fame. People began to know her work as a poet, and as time went by, she was allowed to teach male students (of course). Her literary production was also prolific, reaching a total of 13 books of poetry.
People who knew of her marriage were outraged by how different she was from the rest: she did not stop writing and researching, transgressing the feudal laws of the time. The fatal and inexorable destiny took the life of this woman when she was only 29 years old. She had no children, for she had devoted her whole life to her intellectual passions.
As a scientist, engineer, botanist, musician, inventor, and artist, Da Vinci enjoyed unbeatable worldwide fame since the 16th century. Wang Zhenyi was erased from history; as a sample, perhaps this is the first time in your life you hear anything about her. It was not until 1994 that the International Astronomical Union “baptized” a crater on the planet Venus with her name.
The recognition of the work of this woman genius turns out to be on another planet, while in this one we completely ignore the magnitude of her contributions and her love for knowledge.
Prejudice against women is something that has existed for millennia. However, nothing justifies the marginalization that gender has suffered since then. Although it is not the only type of exclusion, it deprives us of knowing that other part of history that is just as valuable and constructive.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva