Émilie du Châtelet Trivia Questions

She had a famous intellectual and romantic relationship with Voltaire from 1733 until her death. They lived together at her estate, collaborating on physics and philosophy.

She became pregnant at 42, a high-risk pregnancy, and died a week after giving birth to a daughter, who also died shortly after.

Du Châtelet was educated at home by tutors, not a convent. She was fluent in Latin, Greek, and German, and studied mathematics from her teens.

Voltaire did flee to England in 1726, but du Châtelet was only 19 and not yet involved with him. They met years later, after his return to France.

She was an avid gambler at the court of Louis XV, often winning large sums, which she used to buy books and scientific equipment for her studies.

Her translation of Newton's 'Principia' included her own commentary, which refined and corrected some of his calculations. It remains the standard French translation today.

She never won that prize. The first woman to win was Sophie Germain in 1816, years after du Châtelet's death. Du Châtelet did submit an essay to the academy, though.

In her 'Institutions de Physique', she proposed that the energy of a moving body depends on v² (not v), a key insight later formalized into the kinetic energy formula.