1862
Dmitri Pisarew
M.W. Antionovich
On the origin of Species
1864
Serge Rachinsky, professor of Plant physiology translates Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Through Natural Selection into Russian
1865
Second printing of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Through Natural Selection
1866
There is a report (by Herzen) that Vlad is arrested in April, but it turns out to be false. At the same time his engagement to the young Masha Mikhailis was broken. He was then offered another marriage by another women (not sure who but he refused) Apparently he was in Heidelberg this year
1868
The girls offered vlad the choice between Aniuta and Anna, he picked Sofia. Sofia felt obligated to take care of her sister and the girls and she probably liked being chose above her sister.
So intent was Sofia on leaving home and continuing with her studies that she decided to take firm action. She chose the evening of a dinner party at the house to make her move, she did not arrive at the table, leaving the message that she was busy preparing her wedding plans with Vladimir. In the company of his guests Vasily had no choice but to feign knowledge of this to prevent a scene, and by doing so he made a public blessing of the union that could not easily be retracted. Sofia was at last free to pursue her further education. The couple were eventually married on September 27th 1869 and had a blessing in a Russian Orthodox church. Three days after the wedding the Kovalevskys arrived in Petersburg.
She married her husband and they first go to St. P where Sofia thinks she will be able enter an institute of higher learning but she is wrong so they go elsewhere.
1869
Sofia & Vlad started in St Petersburg, but Sofia couldn’t get into lectures head right away to Vienna with Aniuta. Aniuta heads on to Paris but has her mail forward home via Sofia to hide her location from her parents. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually Sofia received permission of the professors to attend courses
1869 Heidelberg
There may be a poem called “The Husband’s Complaint” written around this time by Sofia (she is a bit annoyed how content he is to sit back and read and do nothing) in the poem the husband fells how shocked he was to find that his wife really meant what she said when she said she was serious about continuing her studies, who could blame him he asks he had carelessly assured her that she could do so and now she is making his life miserable by holding him to his promise. She might have had many phobias and required his companionship(?) Evreinova escaped Russia with the help of Vlad and sent a letter of thank you to Vlad’s brother which got him arrested. Vlad had to borrow 3000 rubles from Sofia’s father to get him out. Evreinova and Aniuta considered intimacy between Sonia and Vlad inappropriate and made everyone aware of it.
1870 – Berlin and Weierstrass
VLAD & SOPHIA Descent of Man carried across Prussian lines into besieged Paris in 1870 during Franco-Prussian War.
Vlad is in Jena working on his dissertation
1871
Descent of Man
Vlad studied fossils of vertebrates across Germany, France, Holland and Great Britain attending lectures and museums at each stop, he added to his fossil collections while in France and Italy.
1872
VLAD translated 1872 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
1873
VLAD - Wrote 6 papers between 1873-1877 in three languages (none Russian) on large, hoofed, herbivorous mammals, the perissodactyls (odd) and artiodactyls (even). Palaeontographica (German journal) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and his most famous french treatise published by Memoires de l’Academie Imperiale des Sciences de st. Petersbourg on the evolution of horses. Others praise Vlad’s skill of introducing evolutionary ideas into paleontology to help better arrange large groups of otherwise undifferentiated mammals. Looked at correlating changes of altered anatomy with a changing environment. Identified a correlation in change in hooves and teeth, shift from browsing leaves in woodlands and marshes to grazing grasses and running in the open. Thomas Henry Huxley ended at the same conclusion but lacked the extensive documentation of Kovalevsky
1883
Vlad inhaled chloroform and put a bag over his head, in a letter to his brother he writes “Write Sophia that my constant thought was about her, and how very wrong I was before her, and how I spoiled her life which, except for me, would have been bright and happy.”
On hearing the news Sophia was overwhelmed with despair, isolating herself in her room for 5 days, eventually losing conscience leading her physician to force feed her and put her on bed rest. A few days later she awoke, asked for a pen and paper and started work on a mathematics problem.
It wasn’t until Vlad’s death that Weierstrass felt completely comfortable actively seeking university positions for Sofia. A window was eminently respectable, her own boss, in control of her own fate.
It was a very short time after Vlad’s death, Sofia was offered a position as a private lecture at Stockholm University.