Emilie du Chatelet

Emilie du Chatelet, the only Frenchwoman of her time to develop a passionate talent for science and mathematics. Emilie was born in 1701, in Paris, into a noble family. Because of her name, she was highly educated in literature, poetry, and foreign languages. Actually, by the age of 12 she was fluent in Latin, English, German, Italian, and Spanish. However, Emilie found extreme interest for mathematics.She also married into another noble family, in which she was able to study under  two great mathematicians, Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis and Alexis-Claude Clairaut. At the age of nineteen she married the thirty-four-year-old Marquis du Châtelet. Emilies is also known to have associate and love philosopher Voltaire, in which she helped him write his version of Elements de la Philosophie de Newton. Emilie's most notable achievement is her French translation, with an added detailed commentary of Newton's Principia. Unfortunately, she died early, and it remained unfinished.

Emilie never felt lonely in her life; she had several affairs during her lifetime. When Madame du Chatelet was 44, she became surprisingly pregnant. It is key to remember that during this time era, women were usually grandmothers by the age of 44, and it was unheard of for a woman to become pregnant at that age. In the spring of 1748, Emilie met and fell in love with the Marquis de Saint-Lambert, a courtier and very minor poet. This affair, however, did not destroy her loving, scholarly friendship with Voltaire. Even when he found out that she was carrying Saint-Lambert's child, Voltaire was there to support her. With the help of Voltaire and Saint-Lambert, she was able to convince her husband that it was his child she was carrying. Emilie thought she only had nine months to live, because she would not make it through child birth, so she put all of her efforts into completing her translation of Principia. Whenever her daughter was born, Emilie was working at a friend's desk. Initially all seemed well and Emilie's friends came to visit, but she became ill and died of an infection within the week. Her death filled all of the intellectual  Europeans with sadness, and they laid her to rest like a queen. Her infant was not taken care of after Emilie's death, so the infant died shortly after. Emilie's work was seen to have been published by a former friend Clairaut, and he published it in 1759, in a two-volume edition. Although Emilie du Chatelet did create any original science, she interpreted it for the French people to understand, and through her efforts, the arrivals of Halley's comet was able to be predicted.

Refrences and Photo from :
The History of Mathematics by David Burton
http://scriptamus.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/ladies-of-the-laboratory-3-the-scientific-slut-emilie-du-chatelet/

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/chatelet.htm