Sophie Germain

Marie-Sophie Germain (April 1, 1776 – June 27, 1831) was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Despite initial opposition from her parents and difficulties presented by a gender-biased society, she gained education from books in her father's library and from correspondence with famous mathematicians such as Lagrange, Legendre, and Gauss. One of the pioneers of elasticity theory, she won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her essay on the subject. Her work on Fermat's Last Theorem provided a foundation for mathematicians exploring the subject for hundreds of years after. Because of her gender, she was unable to make a career out of mathematics, but she worked independently throughout her life.
When Germain was 13, the Bastille fell, and the revolutionary atmosphere of the city forced her to stay inside. For entertainment she turned to her father's library. Here she found J. E. Montucla'sL'Histoire des Mathématiques, and his story of the death of Archimedes intrigued her.

Germain decided that if geometry, which at that time referred to all of pure mathematics, could hold such fascination for Archimedes, it was a subject worthy of study. So she pored over every book on mathematics in her father's library, even teaching herself Latin and Greek so she could read works like those of Sir Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler. She also enjoyed Traité d'Arithmétique byÉtienne Bézout and Le Calcul Différential by Jacques Antoine-Joseph Cousin. Later, Cousin visited her in her house, encouraging her in her studies.Germain's parents did not at all approve of her sudden fascination with mathematics, which was then thought inappropriate for a woman. When night came, they would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left she would take out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics. As UC Irvine's Women's Studies professor Lynn Osen describes, when her parents found Sophie “asleep at her desk in the morning, the ink frozen in the ink horn and her slate covered with calculations,” they realized that their daughter was serious and relented. After some time, her mother even secretly supported her.