510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



matician, the author of many books, and the translator into French 

 of the works of Newton; the beautiful Mademoiselle Delaunay, 

 student of astronomy, geometry, physics, and anatomy; and others 

 less distinguished. 



A little later we read of Madame Lavoisier, who assisted her hus- 

 band in his chemical experiments, learning English and German in 

 order to translate for him the scientific works written in those lan- 

 guages, as well as engraving, in order to be able to illustrate his writ- 

 ings; the plates in his treatise of Elementary Chemistry all bear her 

 signature. Madame Lavoisier was very beautiful, and her face is 

 familiar to all through the celebrated portrait by David, which repre- 

 sents her standing behind her husband as he sits at his worktable. 

 After the death of Lavoisier, who perished on the guillotine, his 

 widow married Count Rumford, and lived to a great age. 



Sophie Germain, born in 1776, is another French woman noted as 

 a mathematician; she has been called one of the creators of mathe- 

 matical physics. Her tomb at Pere-la-Chaise is still often decked 

 with fresh flowers. A high school for girls and a street in Paris have 

 been named in her honor. 



The recently published memoirs of Sophie Kowalevski have 

 shown the difficulties which a Russian woman has to overcome in 

 order to obtain the higher education, and they are also most pathetic, 

 showing that neither science and learning nor the honors they bring 

 can satisfy the deepest longing of a woman's heart. Full as are the 

 pages of the record of her intellectual achievements, and the bril- 

 liant success of her genius, they are none the less the record of an 

 unsatisfied and empty life. 



Monsieur Rebiere does full justice to the fame of Caroline 

 Herschel, Mary Somerville, and our own Maria Mitchell, whose 

 names and achievements are too well known to need mention here, 

 and he also gives short biographies of many women now engaged in 

 scientific pursuits in England and America: among them Miss 

 Agnes Mary Gierke, author of many important works on astronomy; 

 Miss Charlotte Angas Scot, one of the great living mathema- 

 ticians, born in England, and now professor of mathematics at Bryn 

 Mawr; Mrs. Ladd-Franklin, a graduate of Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity, not only noted as a mathematician, but as a student of logic and 

 physiology; and others. An interesting account is given of Miss 

 Dorothea Klumpke, born in San Francisco, and to-day " one of the 

 foremost astronomers of France," where she is on the staff of the 

 Observatory of Paris. 



In studying the lives of those women who have been distin- 

 guished in science we are forced to the conclusion that their genius 

 has but a limited field; while many have obtained fame through 



