Du Châtelet-Lomont, Gabrielle-Émilie (1706–49)

The name of this aristocratic woman, a true intellectual with a passion for mathematics, philosophy and science, is linked to that of Voltaire, whose life and interests she shared for fifteen years. In the rural retreat of Cirey they studied, disagreed, wrote and published. She was introduced to Newtonian science by Maupertuis and Voltaire but departed from their views, when she tried to combine Leibnizian metaphysics with Newton’s empirically based science in her Institutions de physique (1740). She translated Newton’s Principia from Latin into French and added a commentary on the system of the world (1745–9, published 1756).