De La Tour, Maurice Quentin, Madame Du Châtelet at her desk, 18th century,
Private collection, Choisel, château de Breteuil. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emilie_Chatelet_portrait_by_Latour.jpg
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet was a French mathematician, physicist and author during the Enlightenment who defied the gender roles of the time and published many scientific works and translations. Born in 1706 into a wealthy and influential family, her father recognized her intelligence at a young age and had her tutored in mathematics, literature, and science, as well as Latin, Italian, Greek, and German. As a teenager, Émilie used her skills in mathematics to devise gambling strategies in order to get money for books. At age 19, she entered into an arranged marriage to the Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet-Lomont, with whom she had three children.
She was able to resume her study of mathematics at age 26. Around that time she also began an affair and intellectual collaboration with the philosopher Voltaire. Du Châtelet was tutored by several prominent mathematicians and studied physics and mathematics at her countryside estate, where she had a library of over 20,000 books. One of her major accomplishments was writing the physics textbook Institutions de physique, which covered the current work on physics at the time as well as some of her own ideas.
Du Châtelet also wrote a paper for a contest at the French Academy of Sciences about fire, heat, and light, where she proposed that different colors of light had different heats and predicted the existence of what is now called infrared radiation. She also published many translations, including a translation and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which is still considered the standard French version. Du Châtelet died at age 42 in 1749 due to complications from pregnancy.
Goodayle, Lucie. Pliosaur at the Natural History Museum. Photograph. The Guardian, 16 March 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/16/mary-anning-female-fossil-hunter- changed-science.
Another woman defying the gender norms of science in her time was Mary Anning, an English paleontologist who lived during the Victorian Era. Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, which is located along the Jurassic Coast, a stretch of cliffs along the shore of England that contain fossil deposits from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Ages.
Her family was very poor and Mary and her father made extra money by finding and selling fossils. When Mary was 12 years old, her brother, Joseph, found a strange skull. Mary spent months carefully digging out the skeleton. This skeleton was the first known specimen of an Ichthyosaurus, a marine reptile that lived 201-194 million years ago.
Anning continued to hunt for and sell fossils throughout her life. Her other important discoveries include the first complete Plesiosaurus and the first pterosaur (the largest flying animal) found outside of Germany. In addition to finding, excavating, and cleaning fossils, Anning also sketched them, studied them, and tried to identify them. She had little formal education but taught herself geology and anatomy.
Due to her poor social class as well as her gender, Anning was not credited for her discoveries and was patronized and degraded by other male scientists. However, many distinguished scientists came to consult her about her fossil hunting. Most of her discoveries ended up in museums and helped spark interest in geology and paleontology. Anning died in 1847 from breast cancer when she was 47 years old. Several of her discoveries, including the ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur are still on display at the Natural History Museum in London.
About the Author
Marcella is currently a sophomore at Northwood High School. She is interested in biodiversity and animal behavior, and she plans to work in Conservation Biology. She plays the piano and also enjoys reading, baking, and being outside.
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Eschner, Kat. “Five Things to Know About French Enlightenment Genius Émilie du Châtelet.”
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Tretkoff, Ernie. “December 1706: Birth of Émilie du Châtelet.” American Physical Society, vol.
17, issue no.11, 2008, https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200812/physicshistory.cfm. Accessed 8 May 2022.
Newman, Cathy. “The forgotten fossil hunter who transformed Britain’s Jurassic Coast.” National
Geographic. National Geographic Society, 29 March 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/mary-anning-forgotten-fossil-hunter-british-jurassic-coast. Accessed 8 May 2022.
Eylott, Marie-Claire. “Mary Anning: the unsung hero of fossil discovery” Natural History Museum.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.html. Accessed 8 May 2022.
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