Colloquium: Émilie Du Châtelet and the foundations of physics

© Jan-Willem van Holten

The French marquess Émilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was a self-made philosopher, physicist and mathematician, and the first woman to publish a scientific paper in the annals of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. She translated Newton's Principia from Latin into French, adding almost 300 pages of commentary, additions and calculations. She also wrote her own introduction to physics entiteled Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), which has recently been translated into Dutch. Sections of this book found their way into the great Encyclopedia of d'Alembert and Diderot. Her other love was the philosopher-poet Voltaire, who found a refuge to escape prosecution by the French government at her estate in Cirey s/Blaise in north-eastern France.