Philosophical, Literary, and Historical Pieces…Second edition

1780

De Beer Eb 1780 V

London: Printed for Fielding and Walker, 1780

French intellectual, Émilie du Châtelet (1706-49) was born into an aristocratic family. Highly educated, she first used her mathematics skills as a teenager to gamble and win money to buy books. In 1725, du Châtelet married the Marquis du Châtelet, but had a string of lovers, one of whom was French writer and philosopher, Voltaire (1694-1778). Together for 15 years, du Châtelet and Voltaire’s relationship was a meeting of two great minds. They worked together, reading and editing each other’s manuscripts – her most famous work was a translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687). The first two lines of Voltaire’s ‘Epistle’, show the respect he held for du Châtelet’s intellect. However, he failed to give her any credit for her contribution to his Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton.