The Purchase of the North Pole by Jules Verne

"And so, Mr. Maston, you consider that a woman can do nothing for the advance of the mathematical or experimental sciences?"

"To my extreme regret, Mrs. Scorbitt," said J. T. Maston, "I am obliged to say so. That there have been many remarkable female mathematicians, especially in Russia, I willingly admit; but with her cerebral conformation it is not in a woman to become an Archimedes or a Newton."