Kovalevskaia Fund Farewell Message

First, for those who came here looking for Ann’s book “Sex and Herbs and Birth Control”, we’re sold out of hard copies, but we’re in the process of arranging for Amazon KDP to sell it in their print-on-demand program for under $10. So within a few weeks you should be able to find it there. It should also continue to be available as an e-book.

The Kovalevskaia Fund started in 1985 and since that time has dispensed prizes and scholarships and occasionally supported conferences for women scientists in several countries and regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, most recently in Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, Peru, and Southern Africa.

During this time we have enjoyed administering it and, in particular, traveling around the world meeting some wonderful people — scientists, women’s rights activists, representatives of organizations that collaborate with us. However, as we get older and as traveling gets more difficult we no longer anticipate being able to do all of this. At the same time, our efforts to find other organizations to take over the Fund’s projects have failed. They all have their own ways of doing things and don’t seem to be interested in branching out to what we do, in part because a basic principle of the Fund is that in all the places where we have projects we have confidence in the local people to administer them well. We never make selections of winners or plan or direct the prize competitions.

In 2025 we will travel to Cuba and Vietnam, and also meet on Zoom with our colleagues in Mexico about the future of the projects in those three countries, where they have been most successful and are in the hands of stable, well-established organizations (rather than ad-hoc groups whose future is uncertain). In those three cases, before the Fund dissolves next year it will dispense 10 years of funding at the current rate, so that the prizes and other activities can continue at least until 2035. Our hope is that by then — the 50th anniversary of the first Kovalevskaia Prizes in Vietnam — they will find a new source of funds, either their own government, the foreign aid program of a government perhaps in Europe, or a private foundation.

Finally, we wish to deeply thank all those who have supported the Kovalevskaia Fund through your donations. We’ll send out a final newsletter in late Spring. But after 2025 the Fund will no longer exist.

Ann Hibner Koblitz and Neal Koblitz