Candles in the Dark: Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Somerville

The story of a woman in the early eighteenth century, or even in the early nineteenth century, struggling to get a mathematical education, is curious.⁠[1] Émilie du Châtelet was the daughter of the chief of protocol in Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles. She had access to the personal libraries of her mildly unconventional parents and […]