The book, _Women in the History of Quantum Physics: Beyond Knabenphysik_ is the result of an international, interdisciplinary project initiated as part of the broader effort to celebrate the centennial of quantum mechanics. It presents original analyses of the lives and work of sixteen women who, throughout the twentieth century, from various locations and in diverse ways, participated in the development of quantum physics. By focusing on lesser-known figures and introducing a gender perspective to historical studies of physics, we aim to challenge the conventional all-male narratives that often reinforce the masculine image of the field. From these richly detailed microhistories, several themes emerge, offering insights into the historically persistent gendered dynamics of physics research.

Acknowledged as the first Brazilian woman to earn a PhD in Physics, Sonja Ashauer (1923 - 1948) was trained at the University of São Paulo (USP), particularly in the Physics Department of the former Faculty of Philosophy, Science, and Letters (FFCL), and later at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD under the supervision of Paul Dirac.
Her doctoral research focused on reformulating the equations of classical electrodynamics for a point-like electron, addressing a problem introduced by Dirac in the late 1930s to circumvent divergence issues in quantum electrodynamics – a major theoretical challenge during the 1930s and 1940s.
Drawing on archival sources such as interviews, correspondence, and scientific publications, this presentation examines Ashauer’s academic trajectory, from her early education to her doctoral research, highlighting the research practices in theoretical physics she encountered and contributed to at FFCL and Cambridge. The theoretical problems Ashauer pursued at Cambridge were already part of ongoing debates at FFCL, particularly through the influence of Gleb Wataghin, the department's head, as well as Brazilian physicists Mario Schenberg and José Leite Lopes. At FFCL, Ashauer joined a small, enthusiastic group of young researchers, where discussions on the latest advancements in quantum electrodynamics were central, even at the undergraduate level. Her time at Cambridge reflected this collaborative and internationalizing spirit. She frequently sent textbooks and preprints of publications back to FFCL, an effort that underscored her commitment to integrating the department into international physics debates.

The philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and political activist Grete Hermann is currently being rediscovered as a “hidden figure” in the debate on the theories of hidden variables. Her doctoral thesis on polynomial ideals (1925) has received comparatively little attention. That work presented the first examples of methods for deciding whether an equation belongs to an ideal, i.e., for deciding whether a single inhomogeneous linear equation can be solved in finitely many steps. Later, in the course of the development of computer algebra, Bruno Buchberger (1965) introduced the Gröbner basis, i.e., a method for generating the set of an ideal in a polynomial ring over a field, and demonstrated possible applications for computing with polynomials in electrical computing systems. Gröbner bases are used today in many mathematical software systems. Buchberger does not mention Hermann's work in his dissertation, but he refers to Bartel van der Waerden's book on Modern Algebra (1937), which does discuss Hermann’s work in detail. As Peter Ullrich put it, one of Hermann's pioneering steps was reducing algebra to linear algebra. Because linear algebra allows to solve many arithmetic problems concerning polynomial rings more effectively, even if they appear complicated at first glance. Linear algebra has become a crucial tool for representing the states of quantum systems, which are described by complex vectors in high-dimensional Hilbert space. However, the feasibility of quantum computation of the Gröbner basis raises numerous questions that discussed lively today. The current developments from computer algebra to quantum computing invite us to rediscover Hermann's thesis.