Emilie du Châtelet

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe. Emilie du Châtelet, 1706-49, created a translation of Newton’s Principia from Latin into French that helped spread the light of mathematics on the emerging science, and her own book Institutions de Physique, with its lessons on physics, was welcomed as profound. She had the privileges of wealth and aristocracy, yet had to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual in a world of ideas that was almost exclusively male. With Patricia Fara Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge David Wootton Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York And Judith Zinsser Professor Emerita of History at Miami University of Ohio and biographer of Emilie du Châtelet. Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.6	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our
0:11.0	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:14.9	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:16.9	Hello, Emily Dushatale, 1706-1749, was an outstanding French mathematician and natural
0:24.2	philosopher celebrated across Europe.
0:27.6	Her translation of Newton's Brinkipia Mathematica helped spread the light of mathematics on
0:32.4	the emerging science and her own book on the lessons of physics was welcomed as profound.
0:38.8	And while she had the privilege of wealth and aristocracy, she had to fight to be taken
0:42.4	seriously as an intellectual in a world of ideas that was almost exclusively male.
0:48.2	We need to discuss Emily Dushatale, our Patricia Farah, Emeritus Fellow of Clark College
0:53.2	Cambridge, David Wooden, Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York, and Judith
0:59.2	Sincer, Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University of Ohio, and Biographer at Emily
1:04.8	Dushatale.
1:05.8	Judith, what was the world into which Emily Dushatale was born?
1:10.3	Well, it was a world of privilege.
1:11.9	You know, we speak in the United States of the 1% and she was certainly born into that
1:16.7	world.
1:17.7	French society was very stratified.
1:20.4	And she came from the highest echelon of that society.
1:24.1	On her mother's side, she was related to the aristocracy of the court, the people who
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