In 1886, female students at Vassar College put on a parody of the opera “The Mikado” by Gilbert and Sullivan. The work reveals notions about who can or cannot do math.
accidentally discovered “The Mathematikado” as a graduating senior at Vassar College. She was perusing a local bookstore, the kind with used books that smell like history in the making, when she came across a thin paperback with a red-inked title. Together with , she gradually recognized it as one of the plays used in the Trig Ceremonies that Victorian students would write and produce at the end of sophomore mathematics courses. The addition of “math” to the title of one of the era’s most popular operas caught her eye.
About the Researcher
