Size / / /

Content warning:



After the revolution, she passed the boys' exam
and became the first woman in the Luzitania,
students of Nikolai Luzin known for
their interest in a new kind of math,

descriptive math, something more like
philosophy, sometimes described as
mathematics for ladies.

This particular lady worked on functions
converging “almost everywhere”
(a precise term po-trigonometricheski)

and she herself converged almost everywhere, too:
Paris, France; Lvov, Poland; Bologna, Italy;
even a mountain pass named for her lover, Nemytski,
whom she later married.

She married Nemytski, but some say her real love
was Luzin. They say she was despondent at his death,
and that when she was not yet sixty (in other words, 59),
she threw herself in front of a Moscow Metro train.

There’s no way to know. It could have been an accident.
But when a woman had made her name calculating
functions that converge almost everywhere,
we have to think she knew what she was doing.



Jessy Randall’s poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, Nature, and Scientific American. Her most recent book is Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science (MIT, 2022). She is a librarian at Colorado College, and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.
Current Issue
22 Jul 2024

By: Mónika Rusvai
Translated by: Vivien Urban
Jadwiga is the city. Her body dissolves in the walls, her consciousness seeps into the cracks, her memory merges with the memories of buildings.
Jadwiga a város. Teste felszívódik a falakban, tudata behálózza a repedéseket, emlékezete összekeveredik az épületek emlékezetével.
Aqui jaz a rainha, gigante e imóvel, cada um de seus seis braços caídos e abertos, curvados, tomados de leves espasmos, como se esquecesse de que não estava mais viva.
By: Sourav Roy
Translated by: Carol D'Souza
I said sky/ and with a stainless-steel plate covered/ the rotis going stale 
मैंने कहा आकाश/ और स्टेनलेस स्टील की थाली से ढक दिया/ बासी पड़ रही रोटियों को
By: H. Pueyo
Translated by: H. Pueyo
Here lies the queen, giant and still, each of her six arms sprawled, open, curved, twitching like she forgot she no longer breathed.
Issue 15 Jul 2024
Issue 8 Jul 2024
Issue 1 Jul 2024
Issue 24 Jun 2024
Issue 17 Jun 2024
Issue 10 Jun 2024
Issue 9 Jun 2024
Issue 3 Jun 2024
Issue 27 May 2024
Issue 20 May 2024
Load More