Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T08:07:10.214Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sophie Germain: or Was Gauss a feminist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Nick Mackinnon
Nick Mackinnon*
Affiliation:
Winchester College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article is focussed on a letter that perhaps the greatest mathematician ever, Carl Frederich Gauss, sent to a female mathematician, Sophie Germain. The letter is interesting because it is the first that Gauss wrote to Germain in the knowledge that she was a woman, and it contains a piece of mathematics that reveals better than the text of the letter what Gauss really thought of Germain. To put the letter in context I shall give some of Germain’s biography and also briefly describe female mathematicians that pre-date Germain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 74 , Issue 470 , December 1990 , pp. 346 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1990 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Coolidge, J.L., “Six female mathematicians”, Scripta Mathematica 17, 20–31 (1951).Google Scholar
2. Dubreil-Jacotin, Marie-Louise, “Women mathematicians” in Great currents of mathematical thought, ed. Le Lionnais, F., Dover (1971).Google Scholar
3. Andrews, Wayne, Voltaire, New Directions Publishing (1981).Google Scholar
4. Struik, D.J. (editor), A source book in mathematics 1200–1800, Princeton (1986).Google Scholar
5. Almkvist, Gert and Berndt, Bruce, “Gauss, Landen,…, and the Ladies Diary”, American Mathematical Monthly 95, No. 7, 585–608.Google Scholar
6. Fauvel, J. and Gray, J. (editors), The history of mathematics-a reader, Macmillan.Google Scholar
7. Bucciarelli, Louis L. and Dworsky, Nancy, Sophie Germain; an essay in the history of the theory of elasticity, Reidel, D., Bosyton (1980).Google Scholar
8. Grinstein, Louise S. and Campbell, Paul J., Women of mathematics : a bibliographical source book, Greenwood Press (1987).Google Scholar