WOMEN IN PHYSICS 



201 



that of astronomy, in which she always exhibited a special 

 interest, there is every reason to believe. 1 



After the death of Hypatia, the study of natural philoso- 

 phy was almost entirely neglected for more than a thou- 

 sand years. The first woman in modern times to attract 

 attention by her discussion of physical problems was the 

 famous Marquise du Chatelet, although she was better 

 known as a mathematician and as the translator into the 

 French of Newton 's Principia. In her chateau at Cirey 

 she had a well-equipped physical cabinet in which she took 

 special delight. But in her time, as in that of Hypatia, 

 natural philosophy was far from being the broad experi- 

 mental science which it has become through the marvelous 

 discoveries made in heat, light, electricity and magnetism 

 during the last hundred years, as well as through those 

 countless brilliant investigations which have led up to 

 our present doctrine of the correlation and conservation 

 of the various physical forces. There was then no occasion 

 for those delicate instruments of precision which are now 

 found in every physical laboratory by means of which the 

 man of science is able to investigate phenomena and deter- 

 mine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago. 



In the time of Mme. du Chatelet, as during the century 

 following, natural philosophy consisted rather in the me- 

 chanical and mathematical than in the physical study of 

 nature. This is illustrated by the title of the great work 

 on the translation of which she spent the best years of her 

 life Newton's immortal Philosophic Naturalis Principia 

 Mathematica. 



The Marquise's first scientific work was an investigation 

 regarding the nature of fire. The French Academy of 



i For extracts from the ancient authors regarding Hypatia, aa 

 well as for the extant letters to her from her friend and pupil, 

 Synesius, the reader is referred to Wolf's erudite Mulierum Grcs- 

 carum quce Oratione Prosa Usce sunt Fragmenta et Elogia, pp. 

 72-91, ut sup. 



