Emilie du Châtelet: World Class Mathematician and Gambler

1706-1749

Born to French nobles in Paris, Emilie basically pestered her father into getting her tutors– not just any tutors, but the best that their money could by. She became notorious for being a precocious, extraordinarily intelligent little twit, and her family found the least objectionable military officer for her to marry. He was rich enough to satisfy her rather high tastes and apathetic to her extramarital affairs.

After her marriage, her affair with her first true love– math– didn’t end. She continued studying and writing with tutors, and captured the heart of French author and courtisian Voltaire. The two often retired to their chalet and probably had lots of intellectual conversations and totally freaky sex.

Emilie translated all of Newton’s works into French– still considered the standard French version of Newton’s writings to this day– and expanded on the work of German mathematician and physicist Leibniz. She expanded on Leibniz’s work to show that the mass of an objection is not proportional to velocity, but instead to the square of the velocity. This directly contradicted what Newton and Voltaire believed to be true.

If any part of that last sentence sounded familiar to you, that’s because she fucking predicted a little formula known as E=mc2 about 150 years before Einstein did (x).

Voltaire was straight-up intimidated and freaked out by Emilie’s brains, and eventually called off their romantic relationship when Emilie became involved with another man, although the two remained close friends until her untimely death in childbirth

Emilie was, to the very end, a fascinating mix of hedonist and intellectual– she often claimed the last three pleasures a woman had in old age were gambling, greed, and study.

(x)