WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 155 



to dispose of her time and genius according to her own 

 pleasure. And they did well. Like the great geometer of 

 Syracuse, Archimedes, who had ever heen her inspiration 

 in the study of mathematics, she would have died rather 

 than abandon a problem which, for the time being, en- 

 gaged her attention. 



She first attracted the attention of savants by her mathe- 

 matical theory of Chladni's figures. By the order of Na- 

 poleon, the Academy of Science had offered a prize for the 

 one who would "Give the mathematical theory of the vi- 

 bration of elastic surfaces and compare it with the results 

 of experiment. " Lagrange declared the problem insoluble 

 without a new system of analysis, which was yet to be in- 

 vented. The consequence was that no one attempted it^ 

 solution except one who, until then, was almost unknown 

 in the mathematical world; and this one was Sophie Ger- 

 main. 



Great was the surprise of the savants of Europe when 

 they learned that the winner of the grand prix of the Acad- 

 emy was a woman. She became at once the recipient of 

 congratulations from the most noted mathematicians of the 

 world. This eventually brought her into scientific rela- 

 tions with such eminent men as Delambre, Fourier, Cauchy, 

 Ampere, Navier, Gauss * and others already mentioned. 



It was in 1816, after eight years of work on the problem, 

 that her last memoir on vibrating surfaces was crowned in 

 a public seance of the Institut de France. After this event 

 Mile. Germain was treated as an equal by the great mathe- 

 maticians of France. She shared their labors and was in- 

 vited to attend the sessions of the Institut, which was the 

 x At the beginning of her correspondence with Gauss, Legendre 

 and Lagrange Mile. Germain concealed her sex under a pseudonym, 

 "in order," as she declared, "to escape the ridicule attached to a 

 woman devoted to science" craignant le ridicule attache au titre 

 de femme savante. She, too, suffered from the wide-spread effects 

 of Moliere's Les Femmes Savantes, as had many a gifted woman 

 before her time and as have many others of a much later date. 



