The Mathematician Sophie Germain, A Biography Of A Prodigy

The mathematician Sophie Germain may be the most influential female intellectual in the history of France. She was a prodigy in math despite few acknowledging it during her lifetime. In fact, it was not until after her death that the institutions began to give her the recognition she deserved.

However, Germain’s sharp intelligence is not the most interesting part about her. That is the strength of her character. This is because she stood up to the conventions of all time and used the tools she had to devote herself to what she loved most: mathematical research.

She basically had no personal life, so she never married and had no children. She had no hobbies other than her affinity for numbers. As you can imagine, she made exceptional contributions to physics and mathematics.

The world owes her many important contributions to number theory, as well as to the solution of Fermat’s equation and the theory of elasticity.

The mathematician Sophie Germain was stubborn as a child

The mathematician Sophie Germain was born on April 1, 1776 in France into a bourgeois family with enough opportunities to appreciate science and culture.

She was just a young girl when the French Revolution broke out. The social upheaval led her parents to decide to keep her inside the house where she had no way out. There was a large library in her home that she began to browse.

She read Jean-Baptiste Montucla’s Histoire des Mathdmatiques at the age of 13. The section that talked about Archimedes and his deep focus on mathematical subjects fascinated her. It made her want to experience that abstraction from the world, focused on an intellectual question. Thus, she continued with Étienne Bezouts Elements of Arithmetics .

Sophie’s family tried to dissuade her from this love of books when they discovered it. They went so far as to try to eradicate this habit, which they considered undesirable. In addition, they removed her light and heat sources to persuade her to give up these studies. It just made her even more obsessed with the subject. In addition, she wanted to read Newton and Euler, so she had to learn Greek and Latin on her own.

An enriching correspondence

Sophie Germain was a brilliant self-taught person. At the age of 18, she already had access to some class notes from Professor Joseph-Louis Lagrange, who taught at the École Polytechnique in Paris. It was a joy she would not miss. Thus, after studying the notes, she made an unconventional decision: to communicate with the professor.

She knew he would not take her seriously as a woman. That is why she took advantage of the absence of an old student of Professor Lagrange and wrote to him under the name Monsieur Antoine-August LeBlanc. Thus began a fruitful exchange of letters.

The academic was impressed by “Antoine-August’s” knowledge and decided to invite “him” to an interview. Sophie Germain hesitated, but in the end she decided to reveal her identity to him. The professor was so interested in her approach that he ignored the fact that she was a woman. Not only that, he actually became her mentor.

The memory of Gauss and Archimedes

Later, Sophie Germain had access to Carl Gauss’ work. She was impressed and again used the ingenious trick of posing as a man to correspond with the mathematician. Gauss was also impressed by her and responded to her messages with great enthusiasm.

At that time, Napoleon was invading Prussia. Thus, Sophie feared that Gauss would not come out of the military service he needed to do for the country where he lived.

Therefore, she spoke to one of Napoleon’s generals, who was a friend of her family and asked him to protect Gauss. The general did, and Gauss could not believe it. Especially since he had never heard of the lady who so eagerly protected him.

Of course, Germain had to explain his reasons to him and it just impressed him even more. So much so that a few years later he suggested that she become an honorary doctor at the University of Göttingen. However, his proposal was rejected.

But Sophie paved her own way and won the competition for the French Académie des Sciences in 1816. She was the first woman to be part of that institution. Thus, she began to emerge as the talented mathematician she was.

Death surprised her in 1831 and the institutions finally recognized her work later. There is now a street in France and an annual scientific prize named after her.