Marie sophie germain biography book

Marie-Sophie Germain. Sophie Germain came from the liberal educated middle class and was financially dependent on her family until the end of her life. She did not marry and her scientific achievements did not give her a position in society. For Germain, the significance of new scientific knowledge was in its value for science.

How did sophie germain die

After Lagrange wanted to meet the author of the mathematical elaborations personally, her true identity became known to the public as a sensation. Nevertheless, her isolation remained and Germain never became part of the public scientific community during her life. As a woman, she was denied admission to the parisian academy and first she was also denied participation in public meetings.

From to Germain was in correspondence with the German mathematician Gauss, again under a male pseudonym. The result of her number theoretic studies is the partial solution of the Fematic Conjecture. Her established mathematical theorem, today known as the Sophie-Germain theorem , proves a lot of mathematical special cases in her time. She wrote three papers on the plate theory in , , and , receiving the Prix extraordinaire of the Paris Academy for the last paper.