Emilie du Châtelet

Lucille Raynal (University College Dublin)

Ed. by Síofra Pierse, University College Dublin
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge), Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 17 Dec 1706
Died 10 Sep 1749
Activity 1737-1745

Places

Active in France

Activities

Primary

Mathematician
Physicist

Resources

Du Châtelet, born Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil and known as Marquise Du Châtelet-Lomont after her marriage, was a French woman of letters, mathematician, and physicist. For a long time, she was better known as Voltaire’s lover than as the brilliant translator of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). A multiplication of recent works on Du Châtelet, and particularly the recent two-volume edition of her remaining letters in La Correspondence d’Émilie Du Châtelet, edited by Ulla Kölving and Andrew Brown, have greatly contributed to the rediscovery of this major figure of the 18^th<…

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1610 words

Citation: Raynal, Lucille. "Emilie du Châtelet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 January 2023 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12717, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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