WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 153 



could translate and explain it. " In an effort to express in 

 a single sentence all his admiration for his talented friend 

 he does not hesitate to state : c ' Never was woman so learned 

 as she, and never did anyone less deserve that people should 

 say of her, 'She is a learned woman.' ! Again he refers 

 to her with characteristic Frenchiness as "a woman who 

 has translated and explained Newton, in one word a very 

 great man en un mot un tres grand homme."* 



But, although the extent of her attainments and her abil- 

 ity as a mathematician were unquestionable, she fell far 

 short of her great contemporary, Gaetana Agnesi, both in 

 the depth and breadth of her scholarship and in her power 

 of infinitesimal analysis. As to her moral character, she 

 was infinitely inferior to the saintly savante of Milan. She 

 was by inclination and profession an Epicurean and an 

 avowed sensualist. In her little treatise, Reflexions sur le 

 Bonheur Reflections on Happiness she unblushingly as- 

 serts "that we have nothing to do in this world except 

 procure for ourselves agreeable sensations." Considering 

 her profligate life, bordering at times on utter abandon, we 

 are not surprised that one of her countrymen has character- 

 ized her as "Femme sans foi, sans mozurs, sans pudeur," 

 a woman without faith, without morals, without shame. 2 



1 Preface to Mme. du Chatelet 's translation of the Principia of 

 Newton, Paris, 1740. 



2 Voltaire 'a last tribute, ' ' The Divine Emilie, ' ' or, as Frederick 

 II was wont to call her, ' ' Venus-Newton, ' ' concluded with the follow- 

 ing verses: 



"L'Univers a perdu la sublime Emilie; 

 Elle aimait les plaisirs, les arts, la veritd ; 

 Les dieux, en lui donnant leur ame et genie, 

 N'avaient garde pour eux que 1 'immortalite". ; ' 

 The universe has lost the sublime Emilie; she loved pleasure, the 

 arts, truth; the gods, in giving her their soul and genius, retained 

 for themselves only immortality. 



For further information of this extraordinary woman, see Lettres 

 de la Mme. du Chdtelet, Bennies pour la premiere fois, par Eugene 

 Asse, Paris, 1882. 



