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Portrait of Émilie du Châtelet

Science · Physics

Émilie du Châtelet

1706–1749 · French

Natural philosophy and mathematics; Enlightenment

Émilie du Châtelet was a French natural philosopher and mathematician whose annotated translation of Newton's Principia is still the standard French version. Her Institutions de Physique (1740) combined Newtonian mechanics with Leibnizian ideas, and she championed the view that the energy of a moving body is proportional to the square of its speed. She was the companion and collaborator of Voltaire at the Château de Cirey.

How to spot them

  • ▸French translation and commentary of Newton's Principia, published after her death
  • ▸Voltaire's companion at the Château de Cirey in Champagne
  • ▸Institutions de Physique (1740); vis viva proportional to mv²
  • ▸Dissertation on fire submitted to the Académie des Sciences prize competition of 1737
  • ▸Died in 1749 at Lunéville, days after giving birth

Key discoveries & works

French translation and commentary of Newton's Principia (1759 (published posthumously))

Completed just before her death; still the standard French translation

Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics) (1740)

Textbook ostensibly for her son, uniting Newton's physics with Leibniz's metaphysics

Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu (1737)

Essay on the nature of fire and light entered for the Académie des Sciences prize; published by the Académie

Discours sur le bonheur (Discourse on Happiness) (1740s)

Reflective essay on how to live a happy life, published posthumously

Key ideas

  • Supported Leibniz's vis viva: the 'living force' of a moving body is proportional to mass times velocity squared, citing Willem 's Gravesande's experiments dropping balls into clay
  • Speculated in her fire essay that different colours of light carry different heating power
  • Helped spread Newtonian science in France, where Cartesian physics had dominated

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil in Paris on 17 December 1706
  • •Married the Marquis Florent-Claude du Châtelet in 1725
  • •Studied mathematics with Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis and Alexis Clairaut
  • •Lived with Voltaire at Cirey from the 1730s; she collaborated on his Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1738)
  • •Both she and Voltaire entered the Académie's 1737 prize contest on fire; neither won, but both essays were published
  • •Died at Lunéville on 10 September 1749, a few days after giving birth to a daughter

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources