Jenny Rossander

Jenny Rossander (22 January 1837 – 28 August 1887) was a Swedish educational reformer, mathematician, women's rights activist and journalist. She co-founded and directed the informal evening school known as the Rossanderska kursen, which offered advanced courses in mathematics, natural sciences and Swedish for women, and contributed widely to pedagogical discourse through teaching, writing and translation.

Biography

Jenny Rossander was born in Stockholm on 22 January 1837, the sixth of nine children of Erik Rossander|Erik Rossander, a physician and philosopher, and Johanna Sofia Back Rossander. After her father's early death, she supported her family from the age of twelve by working first as a seamstress for a dressmaker and then, from sixteen, as a governess. In 1859 Jenny and her sister Alida Rossander enrolled in the experimental Lärokurs för fruntimmer, an adult education course for women initiated by and other progressive figures in Stockholm. There they studied under uncompensated academic tutors in subjects ranging from humanities to the natural sciences, excelling particularly in mathematics among their peers.