Zdeňka Marie Baborová: The First Female Doctor of the University of Prague

In the Habsburg Monarchy, the first admission of women to universities was in 1897 for the faculty of arts and in 1900 for the faculty of medicine. Prague was ready for this, and one might say that Prague directly initiated this breakthrough. Since 1890, the Minerva girls’ gymnasium had existed here, the first of its kind in Central Europe; it systematically prepared girls for university studies. As early as 1895, some of Minerva’s female students attended university lectures as extraordinary students, so the first woman’s doctoral graduation occurred in Prague as early as 1901, when Zdeňka Marie Baborová received a doctorate in biology. What was her subsequent fate? What sources do we have? And what were the fates of some of her successors? This article aims to address these questions.