An Illustration I Did For The Fantastic Blog Http://coolchicksfromhistory.tumblr.com/ 

An illustration I did for the fantastic blog http://coolchicksfromhistory.tumblr.com/ 

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Émilie du Châtelet

Art by Fiona Hill (tumblr)

Émilie is best known for her 1759 translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.  It is still the leading French translation today.   A close romantic and professional companion of Voltaire, Émilie wrote on a wide variety of subjects including mathematics, physics, philosophy, and female education.

In 1737, Émilie published a paper on the nature of fire which foresaw the discovery of infrared radiation by William Hershel in 1800.  Frustrated by the lack of cohesion between the work of Isaac Newton and the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Émilie combined elements of both along with the work of other scientists in Institutions de Physique.  Created as a textbook for her thirteen year old son, the book was published anonymously in 1740 and soon became popular in France.  

On September 4, 1749, Émilie gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter named Stanislas-Adélaïde du Châtelet, the biological daughter of the poet Jean François de Saint-Lambert.  A week later, Émilie died from a pulmonary embolism at the age of 42.