Emilie du Chatelet 1706 – 1749
Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet, was a French Enlightenment philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. The translator and commentator on Newton's Principia for French readers, a version that remained the standard one for two centuries, she also produced the Foundations of Physics, a synthesis of Newtonian physics with the metaphysics of Leibniz and Wolff. Her long collaboration with Voltaire at her chateau at Cirey produced an extraordinary body of joint scholarly work. She died at forty-two from complications following childbirth.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Enlightenment, Early Modern
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Emilie du Chatelet:
“Judge me for my own merits, or lack of them, but do not look upon me as a mere appendage to a great man.”
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Attributed to Emilie du Chatelet:
“We must love study to be happy.”
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Attributed to Emilie du Chatelet:
“Happiness depends on a few things: good health, the absence of sorrow, the satisfaction of one's tastes, and the cultivation of one's passions.”
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Attributed to Emilie du Chatelet:
“Let us reflect upon what we owe to ourselves, and not what we owe to others.”
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Attributed to Emilie du Chatelet:
“I had to think about what I was reading; I had to think about my own thinking.”