Beyond the Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya

Beyond the Limit, a novel researched for more than ten years by mathematician and educator Joan Spicci, is the true story of Sofya Kovalevskaya's remarkable personal journey, from the constricted life of a teenage girl in St. Petersburg to the triumph of becoming the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics and join the ranks of Europe's great mathematicians of the nineteenth century.
For more than one hundred years, Kovalevskaya's struggle has inspired women of all nations to fight for educational opportunities equal to those available to men. But while she is known for the science and mathematics Opportunity Days sponsored in her name at major universities, the full drama and power of her life has never been told as it now unfolds in this thoroughly researched novel.