This biography of the mathematician, Sophie Germain, paints a rich portrait of a brilliant and complex woman, the mathematics she developed, her associations with Gauss, Legendre, and other leading researchers, and the tumultuous times in which she lived.

Sophie Germain stood right between Gauss and Legendre, and both publicly recognized her scientific efforts. Unlike her female predecessors and contemporaries, Sophie Germain was an impressive mathematician and made lasting contributions to both number theory and the theories of plate vibrations and elasticity. She was able to walk with ease across the bridge between the fields of pure mathematics and engineering physics. Though isolated and snubbed by her peers, Sophie Germain was the first woman to win the prize of mathematics from the French Academy of Sciences. She is the only woman who contributed to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

In this unique biography, Dora Musielak has done the impossibleshe has chronicled Sophie Germain's brilliance through her life and work in mathematics, in a way that is simultaneously informative, comprehensive, and accurate.

First comprehensive biography of French mathematician Sophie Germain describing her contributions to mathematics and her efforts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem Includes many lesser-known facts about Sophie Germain and her contemporaries, including Gauss, Legendre, Lagrange, Libri, Poisson, Fourier, and Cauchy. Fully referenced, this book offers a unique perspective on the scientific environment that flourished in nineteenth-century France

Autorentext
Dora Musielak is an aerospace scientist, the recipient of two NASA research fellowships and other honors. She is a Research Professor at the University of Texas in Arlington and teaches mathematical methods to graduate students in physics and engineering. Dora Musielak is also a historian of mathematics and science. Her research focuses on both the lives of mathematicians and the scientific developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A central topic of her scholarly exploration is the mathematical ideas that germinated and grew in Europe, starting with Euler and Lagrange, in order to discover how mathematics led to developments in physics and astronomy. Her research also includes the mathematical formulations for classical (Newtonian) and modern (Einsteinian) quantum mechanics. Dora Musielak is the author of Sophie's Diary (MAA Press), and her latest book published in Springer Biographies is a scholarly memoir of French mathematician Sophie Germain, describing her contributions to mathematics and her efforts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. The present book is Dora Musielak's tribute to the blind mathematician who saw infinity.

Inhalt

Unforgettable Childhood.- Lessons from l'École Polytechnique.- Sophie's Sublime Arithmetica.- Chladni and His Acoustic Experiments.- Euler and the Bernoullis.- Germain and Her Biharmonic Equation.- Experiments with Vibrating Plates.- Elasticity Theory After Germain.- Germain and Fermat's Last Theorem.- Pensées de Germain.- Friends, Rivals, and Mentors.- List of Illustrations.- The Last Years.- Unanswered Questions.- Princess of Mathematics.- Germain-Gauss Correspondence.- A Bibliography on Sophie Germain.- Illustration Credits.-Index.