ZPEnergy.com - The scientist that history forgot

From KeelyNet News: 09/18/06 - The forgotten genius of Emilie du Châtelet. (This needs to be made into a movie or documentary or both. - JWD) Émilie du Châtelet was a French noblewoman who became important to mathematics as the translator of Newton's Principia. David Bodanis wrote, "A few years ago I was researching a book about Einstein when I stumbled on a footnote about an obscure Frenchwoman of the early 18th century. Her name was Emilie du Châtelet; according to the note, she had played some role in developing the modern concept of energy, and had aquired a certain notoriety in her day.

Together she and Voltaire created something of a modern research institute in an isolated chateau they had rebuilt in eastern France. It was in many respects a century or more ahead of its time. The chateau was like a berthed spaceship from the future. Visitors from intellectual centres in Italy and Basle and Paris came to scoff, then stayed, and became awed by what they saw. I found accounts of Du Châtelet and Voltaire at breakfast, reading from the letters they received - from the great mathematician Bernoulli, and Frederick the Great of Prussia; earlier there had been correspondence with Bolingbroke and Jonathan Swift - and in their quick teasing at what they heard, coming up with fresh ideas that they had then return to their separate wings of the house and compete to elaborate. Du Châtelet began a research programme that went beyond Newton and led to her glimpsing notions that would lead later researchers to the idea of conservation of energy; fundamental to all subsequent physics. Almost immediately after Du Châtelet's death, sharp-tongued gossips began to disparage what she had done. Since her main work was so technical, they had no way of reading it directly. Then, as her insights entered the scientific mainstream, the idea that a woman had created these thoughts was considered so odd that even scientists who did use her ideas came to forget who had originated them.

Original source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1774980,00.html


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