Dorothea von Rodde

Dorothea Schlözer’s father did not subscribe to the generally held notion of women’s limited intellectual capacities and oversaw his daughter’s education in several languages, botany and zoology, optics, Euclidean geometry, algebra and trigonometry, and religion. Although women were not permitted to study at Göttingen University, Schlözer was the first woman to receive a doctorate in Germany. Following an extensive private examination by a faculty committee covering modern languages, mathematics, architecture, logic and metaphysics, classics, geography, and literature, Schlözer obtained a degree in the late 1780s.