Breaking social barriers: Florentia Fountoukli (1869–1915)

Abstract

During the nineteenth century the foundations were laid for the advance of female education. At the same time it was still not easy for women to enter the fields of mathematics and science. In Greece the situation was worse than in some other countries: women were not allowed to matriculate at Athens University until the last decades of the century. Florentia Fountoukli was the first Greek woman to attend lectures at the mathematics department. Her dream of becoming a mathematician was partly fulfilled after a long struggle to persuade university professors to accept her in their lectures as a regular student. Florentia was a talented person who in the end had little choice but to teach philosophy and pedagogy in an Arsakeion school. This paper sheds light on her professional life in the school in Corfu. Finally after four years of service she went to Athens where she set up and managed her own school.

(For another article on the mathematical education of women in the nineteenth century see Marit Hartveit's ‘How Flora got her cap’ in BSHM Bulletin, 24 (2009), 147–158.)

Notes

¹ Many distinguished members of the board of the Philekpedeutiki Etaireia served as Greek ambassadors in Europe. Another example was Nikolaos Mavrokordatos who for a time served as the president of the board but gave up the position in 1882 when he took up the post of the Greek ambassador in Paris (APE2, 14 April 1882).

² Florentia was a prolific poet and playwright for children. She was very much praised by contemporary men of letters for her literary work in journals and newspaper such as in Poikili Stoa, Noumas, the Ephemeris ton Kyrion, and the Acropolis (see Fountoukli 1949, 7). It has recently come to my knowledge that research is being conducted into her poetry.

³ Florentia was one of the best students in her French classes and got her diploma with a distinction. Her thesis was on Jeanne d'Árc and was written in rhyme. In it she compared the French heroine with the Greek Boumboulina, one of the leading female figures in the 1821 Greek Revolution of Independence (see Fountoukli 1949, 11).

⁴ Historical Archives of Athens University, the Senate Archives, Minutes 1886–1891, 17 November 1890, v.15.

⁵ The staff of the School of Philosophy decided to bring the case to the university Senate because it was such a ‘serious’ and complicated affair. The Senate, after considering it from legal, social and practical perspectives, passed it upwards to the Greek Minister of Public Education, asking him to make a resolution since, according to the professors, female matriculation was a ‘premature’ and questionable matter. The Minister gave his personal consent to Stephanopoli's matriculation.

⁶ A young teacher called Anna Papa, for example, applied to Arsakeion for a placement as a Kindergarten teacher after obtaining a schoolteacher's diploma from Parthenagogeion Prinari-Fountoukli; see APE2, 21 September 1895.

⁷ In 1899 Florentia signed some of her poems as Fountoukli-Spinelli (there is an example in Poikili Stoa, 14, 1899). The last name is likely to be her husband's, but no more information is provided. In Arsakeion there was a teacher called Loudovikos Spinellis who was appointed as a music teacher in 1894 and was dismissed three years later in 1897 (APE2, 9 November 1894 and 2 April 1897).