Abstract
Marie-Sophie Germain was born on the first of April, 1776, into a Parisian bourgeois family that had attained a comfortable level of prosperity through several generations of trade.1 Her father, Ambroise-Francois Germain, was a silk merchant who became briefly but actively engaged in politics at the beginning of the French Revolution as an elected deputy of the third estate to the Constituent Assembly that convened in 1789. He died in 1821 at the age of ninety-five.2 Sophie, the second of three daughters, remained financially dependent upon her father throughout her life. Never marrying, she devoted her life to the study of mathematics and science.
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Chapter two: Sophie Germain
The genealogical facts derive in the main from Stupuy, H., (ed.): 1896, Sophie Germain, Oeuvres Philosophiques, (Nouv. Ed.), Paris. (Hereafter cited as Stupuy.) This one volume, containing the editor’s study of the significance of Sophie Germain’s life and work, a collection of a few dozen letters written by or addressed to Sophie Germain, and a reprinting of her philosophical writings, originally appeared in 1879. With his first edition, H. Stupuy, member of the Municipal Council of Paris and of the Departmental Council for Primary Instruction, triggered a surge of interest in Sophie Germain as woman, mathematician and philosopher. In 1888, the Ecole de la rue de Jouy, a school for young women established in 1882, was renamed in her honor. The school still thrives.
A more thorough and trustworthy study of the Germain family was accomplished by Madame Dufour and appeared as a Supplément au bulletin de l’Association Amicale des Anciennes Elèves de l’Ecole Municipale Supérieure Sophie Germain, (1932). A copy of this can be found in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Paris.
Jacques-Amant Lherbette was responsible for a first printing of Sophie Germain’s essay. Lherbette, J., (ed.): 1833, Considerations générales sur l’état des sciences et des lettres, Lachevardière, Paris.
After her mother died in 1823, Sophie Germain moved again, this time to the Left Bank. A commemorative plaque hangs by the entrance of this modest place on the rue de Savoie.
Montucla, M.: 1758, Histoire des mathématiques, 2 vol., C. A. Jombert, Paris.
Libri, G.: 1832, ‘Notice sur Mlle. Sophie Germain’, Journal des débats, 18 May. This obituary article, written by a mathematician of some fame, and friend of Sophie Germain, appeared in Lherbette’s edition of the Considérations générales…, op. cit., and has since served as the major source of information about Sophie Germain.
Libri, op. cit.
Encyclopedia Britanica, 27th ed. (1959) s.v. ‘Sophie Germain’.
Libri, op. cit.
The few details surviving about LeBlanc are located in Registre des élèves, Ecole Polytechnique, vol. 2, held at the Archives of that institution. He was born the 5th of July, 1775, had brown hair, brown eyes, and was 5 ft. 9 in. tall, and resided at 21 rue des Marais, Faubourg St. Germain.
One finds in a folder of assorted administrative records held in the Archives of the Ecoles des Ponts et Chaussées a ‘Liste des Elèves de l’Ecole Polytechnique admis a l’Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées et des supplémentaires’ dated 1 Nivoise, an 6. The eighth name on the list of admissions, just above Poinsot, is LeBlanc. A pen stroke runs through his name and the word mort appears in explanation.
Libri, op. cit.
Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Fr., 9118, ‘Corres. de Mlle Sophie Germain’. All but two items in this collection appear in Stupuy, op. cit. By 1797, Sophie Germain no doubt would have read Cousin’s book on the calculus.
Cousin, J.: 1777, Leçons sur le calcul différentiel et le calcul intégral, C. A. Jombert, Paris.
Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Fr., 9118. Published in Henry, C.: 1879, ‘Les manuscrits de Sophie Germain — documents nouveaux’, Revue Phil. 8, p. 623.
Joseph-Jerôme LeFrançais de Lalande, 1732–1807, ‘…was extremely well-known during his lifetime partly because of the enormous bulk of his writings and partly because of his love for the limelight.” So states T. Harkins in Gillespie, C. C., (ed.): 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner and Sons, New York, s. v. ‘Lalande’.
Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Fr. (N. A.), 4073. Published in Henry, op. cit., p. 635.
The first edition of Lalande’s Astronomie des dames was published in 1785. It was reprinted in 1795, again in 1806 and in 1820 — the last version accompanying Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes.
S Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Fr. 9118. Published in Stupuy, op. cit., p. 250.
Ibid
Ibid.
Ibid.
de Villoison, J.: 1802, ‘Vers de Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d’Ansse de Villoison, membre de l’Institut national de France, pour le jour de la naissance du célèbre astronome Jérôme de Lalande (le 11 juillet)’, Magasin encyclopédique 1, pp. 238–240.
Lalande’s niece — actually the wife of the grandson of Lalande’s uncle — occasionally performed some calculations for her ‘uncle.’
Figures II. 1 and II.4 are reproduced from Stupuy, op. cit. The bust, (Figure II.2) the work of Zacharie Astruc, today stands in the courtyard of l’Ecole Sophie Germain. The sketch (Figure II.4) was done by Mme. Silvain Dufour, the school’s first director.
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© 1980 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Bucciarelli, L.L., Dworsky, N. (1980). Sophie Germain. In: Sophie Germain. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9051-7_2
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