Lydia Sesemann (14 February 1845,

Vyborg Vyborg (; , ; , ; , ) is a town and the administrative center of Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of Vyborg Bay, northwest of St. Petersburg, east of the Finnish capital H ...

– 28 March 1925,

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was a Finnish doctor of chemistry. She was the first woman from Finland to obtain a doctoral degree.

Life

Lydia Sesemann was born in Vyborg in a German-speaking merchant family. The family had come to Vyborg already in 1661 from

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

but had continued to use German as their first language. In

Old Finland Old Finland (; ; ) is a name used for the areas that Russia gained from Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–1721) and the Russo-Swedish War (1741–1743), and which were united as the Vyborg Governorate in 1744. During the Finnish War ...

, the part of Finland she grew up in, there was a stronger tradition in the upper strata of society of letting women receive formal education than in the rest of Finland, an influence from ideals among the Russian elite at the time. Sesemann attended a private school in Vyborg and after the death of her father in 1865 left the country. She spent some time in Germany and began to study

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

at the

University of Zurich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

in Switzerland in 1869. In 1874 she defended her doctoral thesis at the university and thus became the first woman from Finland to obtain a doctoral degree, and the first women to obtain a PhD in chemistry. Giesela Boeck, Lydia Sesemann: 150 Years of Women’s Doctorates in Chemistry, ChemistryViews 2024

/ref> The University of Zurich received several female students and many of them came from the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(of which Finland at the time was a part). Lydia Sesemann is known to have lived in a part of the city popular among other students from Russia. Some of the Russian students were suspected of political intrigues and the Russian government in May 1873 declared that the female students for political reasons must leave the university before the end of the year. Lydia Sesemann didn't do this, and was thus in practice prohibited from returning to Finland. She spent the rest of her life living in Germany. She did not further pursue a scientific career; there were hardly any possibilities for a woman at the time to do this. Although contemporary newspapers in Vyborg mention her achievement, she was not widely recognised in her home country at the time.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sesemann, Lydia Finnish chemists 1845 births 1925 deaths University of Zurich alumni Chemists from the Russian Empire Finnish people of German descent People from Viipuri Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Scientists from Vyborg Finnish women scientists