Today, we meet a lady whose name isn't inscribed in
the Eiffel Tower. The University of Houston's
College of Engineering presents this series about
the machines that make our civilization run, and
the people whose ingenuity created them.
The names of 72 important
scholars who founded the science and mathematics of
structures are written in the Eiffel Tower. Sophie
Germain belongs on that list, but she isn't there
-- no women are.
Sophie Germain was born into a well-to-do Parisian
family in 1776 -- born into a world that was still
hostile to bright women. And she was bright. She
was 13 when the French stormed the Bastille, and
her parents put her under virtual house arrest to
keep her from the dangers of those stormy times.
She went off into the large family library and
began to teach herself mathematics -- much to her
parents' alarm. They tried to keep her from it by
removing the heat and clothing from her bedroom.
When they found her asleep and wrapped in
bedclothes, among stolen candles, calculations, and
a frozen inkwell, they were wise enough to give in.
Sophie spent the Reign of Terror studying calculus.
By then the French were creating the new field of
applied mathematical analysis. The work centered on
the Ecole Polytechnique -- the great French
technical university. The Ecole didn't admit women,
so she learned by studying other people's class
notes. When she started doing original work, she
hid her femininity behind the alias M. LeBlanc. She
used that name to correspond with two extraordinary
mathematicians -- first with LaGrange and then with
Gauss.
Both were quite taken with her work, and they
encouraged her -- even after they found out who she
really was. Then, in 1811, she made the first of
three assaults on a standing prize offered by the
Academy of Sciences. The problem was to describe
the vibration of an elastic plate -- like the top
of a violin, or a flat structural member. This
first effort netted her only some gentle criticism
from LaGrange. Her second try, two years later, won
an Honorable Mention. Then, in 1816, she won the
Grand Prix. Suddenly, at 40, she was accepted into
the company of the great applied mathematicians of
all time: Navier, Poisson, Fourier, Ampère,
Legendre -- names every engineering student knows
today.
She did a great deal during the next 15 years,
particularly in the applied mathematics used to
design structures like the Eiffel Tower and in pure
number theory. In 1831 Gauss arranged for her to
receive an honorary doctorate at Göttingen
University in Germany. She spent that spring
working in terrible pain with breast cancer. She
was only 55 when she died in June -- too soon
actually to meet Gauss -- too soon to go to
Göttingen -- and too soon to receive the
recognition that eventually came to her.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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