Science
1706 to 1749, Paris, France
The Newton of France - who translated the <em>Principia</em>, defended energy as mv², glimpsed the infrared, and argued that physics needs philosophy and that the life of the mind should belong to women too.
Start learning Émilie →Émilie du Châtelet’s translation of and commentary on Newton’s Principia - still the standard French version - and what it means to translate a physics, not merely a text: to re-derive its mathematics in a new language,…
Du Châtelet’s championing of vis viva (living force, mass times velocity squared) against the Newtonians’ momentum (mass times velocity): the 's Gravesande clay-ball experiments, her argument in the Institutions , and t…
Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique (1740) - written to teach her son, and in truth an original attempt to give Newtonian mechanics the metaphysical foundation Newton refused: Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason…
Du Châtelet’s 1737 essay for the Academy of Sciences prize on the nature of fire: written in secret, entered against Voltaire’s own entry, arguing that heat and light are distinct effects and anticipating what we would…
Du Châtelet’s Discourse on Happiness : her defence of the love of study as the passion that most makes us happy and, for a woman shut out of every public career, the one road to freedom and dignity of mind - and her fig…
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