156 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



highest honor that this famous body had ever conferred 

 on a woman. 



The noted mathematician, M. Navier, was so impressed 

 with the extraordinary powers of analysis evinced by one 

 of Mile. Germain's memoirs on vibrating surfaces that he 

 did not hesitate to declare that "it is a work which few 

 men are able to read and which only one woman was able 

 to write." 



Biot, in the Journal de Savants, March, 1817, writes that 

 Mile. Germain is probably the one of her sex who has most 

 deeply penetrated the science of mathematics, not except- 

 ing Mme. du Chatelet, for here there was no Clairaut. 1 



Like Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mile. Germain was endowed 

 with a profoundly philosophical mind as well as with a 

 remarkable talent for mathematics. This is attested by her 

 interesting work entitled Considerations Generates sur 

 I'Etat des Sciences et des Lettres aux Differ entes Epoques 

 de Leur Culture. All things considered, she was probably 

 the most profoundly intellectual woman that France has 

 yet produced. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the 

 state official came to make out the death certificate of this 

 eminent associate and co-worker of the most illustrious 

 members of the French Academy of Sciences he designated 

 her as a rentiere annuitant not as a mathematicienne. 

 Nor is this all. When the Eiffel tower was erected, in 

 which the engineers were obliged to give special attention 

 to the elasticity of the materials used, there were inscribed 

 on this lofty structure the names of seventy-two savants. 

 But one will not find in this list the name of that daughter 

 of genius, whose researches contributed so much toward 

 establishing the theory of the elasticity of metals, Sophie 

 Germain. Was she excluded from this list for the same rea- 

 son that Agnesi was ineligible to membership in the French 



iThis celebrated mathematician, as is well-known, was a col- 

 laborator with Mme. du Chatelet in her translation of Newton 'B Prin- 

 cipia. 



