ABSTRACT
From the window of the Queen’s apartments at the palace of Lunéville, allées of trees shadowed the gravel walks, and borders of yellow and red zinnias brightened the vista. Fountains and the series of circular reflecting pools suggested some relief from the late summer heat, particularly in the early hours of the evening. On August 29th, 1749 Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Bréteuil, marquise Du Châtelet, the forty-two year old mathematician and authority on Leibniz, worked at this window amidst the apparent chaos of her scholar’s tools. All around her, piled on the parquet floor, the shelves of cabinets, and on the tables were the mathematical and astronomical charts, the books of physics, and Newton’s Principia and his System of the World that she had translated and on which she was now writing a commentary. Bits of paper, sealing wax, a compass, the cup of trimmed quill pens, the ink pot, a shaker of sand-littered the desk. Her quarto-sized notebook lay open. She had indicated in the margins the calculations to be corrected. Now, explanations must be clarified, page proofs revised, line after line of complex equations checked.
