Illustration: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• MATHEMATICIAN
  
• Considered the FIRST female mathematician to contribute her own research, rather than just translating or expanding someone else's work
• Made significant contributions to both pure and applied mathematics
• Also known as Marie-Sophie, she grew up during the French Revolution
• Inspired to study math after reading the story of Archimedes' death (supposedly he was so captivated by a math problem that he didn't notice the siege happening around him)
• Self-taught because no schools would accept a woman into their math program
• Partially PROVED Fermat's Last Theorem (despite years of scholarly attempts, no one else had been able to prove any of the theorem; it wasn't proven completely until the 1990s)​
• Corresponded with notable mathematicians, including Joseph Louis Lagrange and Carl Friedrich Gauss, under the male pseudonym "Monsieur Le Blanc"​
• DEVELOPED the modern theory of elasticity, which informs the design and construction of all skyscrapers
• FIRST woman to win a prize from the Academy of Sciences in Paris

Dedicated, Not Delicate

Germain's parents believed the prevailing theory that signifiant mental pursuits were detrimental to women's delicate health, so they forbid her from studying, even going so far as not lighting the fire in her room on winter nights and making her sleep in her birthday suit, in hopes that she would be too cold to get out of bed to study. But Germain was undeterred, sneaking candles in for light and wrapping herself in her blankets to study. Eventually her parents came around and supported her work.

Bibliography: Doyle, Caitlin. Girls Can Do Anything: From Sports to Innovation, Art to Politics, Meet Over 200 Women Who Got There First. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2016. Print.
Gray, Mary W. "Germaine, Sophie." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, 2008, 372-373.
​Rose, Paulette and Ronald K. Smeltzer. "Marie-Sophie Germain." Extraordinary Women in Science & Medicine: Four Centuries of Achievement, The Grolier Club, 2013, 76-81.
Yount, Lisa. A to Z of Women in Science and Math. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1999. Print.

Books by this Awesome Woman

Considérations Générales Sur L'état Des Sciences Et Des Lettres (oui, this is in French)

Biographies for Kids and Young Adults

(picture book)

Research

Historical Fiction

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