Émilie du Châtelet and the Reception of Newton and Leibniz

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749), received an unusually rigorous education for a woman of her era, including tutoring in Latin, mathematics, and natural philosophy arranged by her father, and went on to study advanced mathematics privately under Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis and later Alexis Clairaut, both leading figures in the French reception of Newtonian mechanics. From 1733 she formed a long intellectual and personal partnership with Voltaire, with whom she shared a laboratory and extensive library at her husband's château at Cirey in Champagne, conducting experiments together on the nature of fire and light and jointly producing, in 1738, competing entries — hers unofficially submitted after the deadline — for a prize essay competition of the Paris Academy of Sciences on the nature of fire, both entries earning honorable mention despite neither winning the prize.