When it comes to the history of science and mathematics, what names do you suspect most readily come to mind for most people? Einstein, of course, and Newton, and Darwin naturally; also Galileo and DaVinci would be right off the top for many people. Curie? “Oh well yes, of course – Madame Curie” at least the majority would say when prompted (I hope). What about Du Châtelet or Somerville? Unless the person you’re asking is particularly well-read in the subject, you’ll more than likely simply receive a blank stare in reply.
More’s the pity, for when it comes to the spread of knowledge – particularly the communication of some of the most paradigm-shifting ideas of all time – it is Émilie Du Châtelet and Mary Somerville whose names should not only be familiar to anyone who would call her or himself educated, they should leap to mind as two of the most significant authors in the history of mathematics and physics.
In her 2012 book Seduced by Logic; Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution, Dr. Robyn Arianrhod enlightens her readers about the lives and works of these two remarkable women. She presents Du Châtelet’s early understanding of and significance of Newton’s Principia; her French translation of it “is still the accepted French version” to this day. She explores how Somerville taught herself mathematics and became a “world authority on Newtonian physics,” eventually not only translating LaPlace’s Mechanism of the Heavens but expanding upon it. Ironically, this work would be used as a textbook at Cambridge in the study of astronomy until the end of the Nineteenth Century even though Somerville herself was denied entry to university because she was a woman (even more ironically, her name now graces one of Oxford’s constituent colleges).
That such an well-written, informative, and captivating book about two of history’s great authors on mathematics who happened to be women should have been written by one of the modern world’s great authors on mathematics and mathematicians who also happens to be a woman is not only particularly delicious but particularly fortunate as Dr. Arianrhod’s corpus of published books on the subject is quite possibly the finest collection of books on it by a single author that it is presently possible to assemble.
For any and all interested in the history of science in general, the history of mathematics, physics, or astronomy in particular, the history of women in science, as well as those simply desirous of a particularly “thumping good read” (as James Mustich called such books), Seduced by Logic is most assuredly a book worthy of note.
