ECU - Beatrix Anna Maria van Schurman

Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) was the first woman admitted to a European university when Utrecht allowed her to attend lectures in 1636 — behind a curtain, so as not to distract male students. She mastered fourteen languages, corresponded with Descartes, and later abandoned her intellectual celebrity entirely to join Jean de Labadie's radical pietist commune. The ECU series issued by the Netherlands in the 1990s used the format to spotlight Dutch cultural figures rather than political ones, which is why a scholar appears here rather than a statesman.