David Bodanis writes about the scientist whom history forgot, Emilie du Châtelet:
She had been raised in Paris in the 1710s, growing up in a townhouse of more than 30 rooms overlooking the Tuileries gardens. Her mother had been appalled at having a child who refused to stay politely at children’s parties, or to gossip about clothes, but who instead loved listening in when educated guests — especially astronomers — came to visit.Du Châtelet’s father, luckily, doted on his sole daughter. He kept the mother from sending her off to a convent, as was regularly threatened; he hired tutors to teach her Latin, Greek and mathematics. At Versailles, where her black curly hair and rapid-fire speech won her admirers, he merely sighed when she used her skill at mathematics to win at cards, and then used the money to buy more books, rather than more clothes. But he helped her, with family money, to arrange a marriage with a wealthy army officer who — luckily — would be away with his regiment most of the time.
In her late 20s, after an affair with the individual who inspired the character Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (she was the only partner he had who ever willingly dumped him), she met the poet and writer Voltaire, then in his 40s.
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