Émilie du Châtelet, A Shared Anniversary

December 17th is the birthday of Elizabeth Craven who was born in London in 1750. It also happens to be the birthday of another remarkable eighteenth-century woman, Émilie du Châtelet, who was, in her way, just as daring, unconventional and ground-breaking. She was the first to translate Newton's Principia into French, a quite staggering achievement because the translator had to understand the science thoroughly as well as have a perfect command of both Latin and French.

Gabrielle-Émilie de Bréteuil was born on 17th December 1706, daughter of the Baron de Breteuil who had a court post at Versailles, and like Craven she had an outstanding education. She was taught Latin and mathematics, and went on to study English and Italian. As she grew up she developed a keen interest in physics, but could not of course study at any university, and in 1725 at the age of nineteen she was married to the Marquis du Châtelet. 

After she had given birth to three children including two boys, her husband took the view that her duties as a wife were done, and she was free to devote herself to intensive study and also to choose lovers. She combined these two interests by bestowing her favours on some of the most outstanding intellectuals she could find in Paris. Among them were two leading mathematicians, Maupertuis and Clairut. When she wanted to attend discussions of mathematics held in the Café Gradot in Paris, and was told that only men were allowed to attend, she left but returned the following day dressed as a man. It was her way of making a feminist protest against her exclusion.

    In 1733, Émilie met Voltaire, who shared her passionate interest in science. He was engaged in studying the theories of Sir Isaac Newton, about gravity, light, heat, molecules, the elements, the planets, and everything else. The pair of them fell in love and decided to retire to Cirey in the remote countryside of Lorraine, where Émilie's husband owned a house, to devote themselves to studying and to each other. Voltaire spent a lot of his own money on improving this house, and built a laboratory there, where he and Émilie carried out experiments in order to test Newton's theories. Émilie's husband took a broad-minded view of it and often spent time there too, as did any of their friends who could be lured to travel so far from Paris. In 1737, Émilie and Voltaire both submitted entries for the annual prize of the Académie of Sciences. The topic set was a disquisition on the nature of fire. Both of their entries were thought worthy of publication, and although the first prize was won by Euler, it was incredibly bold of Du Châtelet to enter at all in such a competition against the leading scientists of the world, and judged by an institution that did not admit women.

    When Voltaire published his Institutions de physique in 1740, he openly acknowledged that Émilie had been his collaborator on the work. 

    In 1745, Du Châtelet embarked on her great translation of Newton's Principia, which became the  standard text used in the French language for a long time. Tragically she did not live to finish it, as she died in 1749, in childbirth, but it was completed by other scholars and published in 1759.

    Her books include a translation of  Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees, in the Preface to which she wrote:

I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us [women] from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations,[she means as Queen Mother in France or monarch in some other European nations]  but that there is no place where we are trained to think ... Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by a woman. Why these creatures whose understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education...

Nowadays, as a result of feminism and Women's Studies, we know that there are actually women who have written good tragedies, poems, and stories, painted good pictures and made contributions to science! It is a process of re-discovery and recognition, which then contributes to creating an environment where women have greater confidence in their own abilities. Émilie du Châtelet's achievements were impressive, and if she had ever met Elizabeth Craven the two would have felt they had a lot in common.

The Marquis d'Argens wrote in his Mémoires Secrets de la Republique de Lettres, XII,

"I will fail in what is owed to the female sex, if I do not, with an eulogy worthy of the rare talents and eminent qualities of Mme du Châtelet, show clearly that there is no branch of Learning in which women cannot excel."

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Chatelet/