She finished her career in Sweden. View nine larger pictures. Biography Sofia Kovalevskaya was the daughter of Vasily Vasilievich Korvin-Krukovsky - , an artillery general, and Elizaveta Shubert, both well-educated members of the Russian nobility. Sofia's name is written in different forms and we should say a little about that here. Ignoring the problems of transliteration from Russian, her father's name was Krukovsky but he made applications to the Department of Heraldry to allow him to be considered a member of the nobility.
This was refused until he retired in when his application was allowed and he became Korvin-Krukovsky, the name Korvin coming from Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary. Vasily had inherited two large estates in , one at Palibino and the other at Moshino.
Around the time he inherited these estates, he had married Elizaveta Fedorovna Shubert - , the daughter of Fyodor Fyodorovich von Shubert and Sophie von Shubert.
Elizaveta had been born on 15 December , and was about twenty years younger than her husband. Let us note at this point that sources differ in giving Vasily Korvin-Krukovsky's year of birth, with dates ranging between and It is also worth noting that Elizaveta Shubert's grandfather was the astronomer and cartographer Theodor Friedrich Schubert - who has a crater on Mercury named after him. Fyodor went on to study in the Physics-Mathematics Faculty of St Petersburg University and then worked in a government ministry.
We need to also say a little about Sofia Kovalevskaya's name. She was given the name Sofia Vasilievna Krukovsky, only adopting the name Korvin-Krukovsky after her father's application for nobility was accepted in She is often called Sophie or Sonya, the first being an anglicised version of Sofia, the second being a familiar version by which she was known by her friends after she became an adult.
