A film about the remarkable life of Russian mathematician Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), the first woman to become a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Sofia Kovalevskaya's life was full of complex and dramatic twists and turns. These included a fictitious marriage that allowed her to obtain a higher education abroad; a period when she and her husband embarked on a commercial venture; and, finally, her breakup with him. The film's drama is built on the fact that Sofia Kovalevskaya's grown-up daughter, Fufa, several years after her mother's death, tries to understand who she was not only as a mathematician and public figure, but also simply as a person.

The film tells about the complex relationship between two chemical scientists. Viktor Sviridov arrived from the province, where he works as an engineer at one of the factories, at the metropolitan institute in order to defend his project related to an urgent scientific problem. However, without the support of a longtime friend Alexei Grekov, he has no chance: most members of the academic council are opposed to his project and himself. But Grekov is also forced to choose between his wife's scientific career and obligations to another.