daughtersofhistory: Émilie du Châtelet (1706 - 1749) Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonneli

daughtersofhistory:Émilie du Châtelet (1706 - 1749)Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil is mostly known in history books for being Voltaire’s mistress. In reality she was a prominent figure of the Age of Enlightenment.She recevied an excellent education especially for her time. She knew several languages and took a special interest in science and math. Her father encouraged his daughter and often they entertained scientists and mathematicians in their home. She married Marquis Florent-Claude de Châtelet-Lomont in 1725 and had three children. Her husband let her free to pursue her studies of math and science, as well as rub shoulders with the great men of her time such as Bernoulli, Buffon, Réaumur, Maupertuis or Voltaire. She carried an affair with the later, he would become a life-long intellectual companion always encouraging her in her researches. In 1737, after several months of conducting research in secret, she entered a contest sponsored by the French Academy of Sciences on the nature of light, heat and fire, submitting her paper Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu. In it she suggested that different colors of light carried different heating power and anticipated the existence of what is now known as infrared radiation. She did not win the contest, but her paper was published and was positively received by the scientific community.She also developed a strong interest in the work of Isaac Newton, which was somewhat controversial at the time in France, where Cartesian philosophy was favored over Newton’s ideas. Émilie and Voltaire jointly wrote a book, Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, which explained Newton’s astronomy and optics in a clear manner for a wide French readership. Only Voltaire’s name appeared on the book, but he acknowledged her important role. Émilie also worked on another manuscript, Foundations of Physics, in which she considered the philosophical basis of science and tried to integrate the conflicting Newtonian, Cartesian, and Leibnizian views.One of her most important contributions to science was her elucidation of the concepts of energy and energy conservation. Following experiments done earlier by Willem ‘s Gravesande, she dropped heavy lead balls into a bed of clay. She showed that the balls that hit the clay with twice the velocity penetrated four times as deep into the clay; those with three times the velocity reached a depth nine times greater. This suggested that energy is proportional to mv2, not mv, as Newton had suggested. While conducting her scientific work, Émilie du Châtelet still carried out her duties as a mother to her three children and as a hostess for her many visitors so she was always busy, and had little time for sleep. At age 42 Émilie du Châtelet discovered she was pregnant. At that time, a pregnancy at such an old age was extremely dangerous. Knowing she would likely die, she began working 18 hours a day to complete her biggest project, a French translation of Newton’s Principia, before she died.More than simply a translation, Émilie du Châtelet’s Principia included her own notes, examples, derivations, and clarifications of Newton’s often obscure writing, as well as examples of experiments that confirmed Newton’s theories. Her modern notation and clear style soon helped French scientists understand and build upon Newton’s ideas.With determined effort, she achieved her goal of finishing the manuscript just before she died in September 1749. The complete work was published ten years later, when the return of Halley’s Comet brought about a renewed interest in Newtonian mechanics. Émilie du Châtelet’s book was for many years the only available translation of Newton’s Principia into French, and the translation and insightful commentary probably helped advance science in France. [x]‘No woman was ever more learned than she was, yet no one deserved less than she did to be called a blue-stocking. She only ever spoke about science to those from whom she thought she could learn; never did she discuss it to attract attention to herself. She was not ever seen gathering around her those circles which wage battles of the mind, where one sets up a kind of tribunal and passes judgement on one’s century - which then in its turn judges you most severely. For a long time she moved in circles which did not know her worth and she paid no attention to such ignorance. … I saw her, one day, divide a nine-figure number by nine other figures, in her head, without any help, in the presence of a mathematician unable to keep up with her.’ Voltaire -- source link

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