History of Science: Sophie Germain, the first woman to win France’s prestigious Grand Prize in Mathematics, is ignored because her ticket to the ceremony was “lost in the mail” — January 9, 1816

In January 1816, the general secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences sent Marie-Sophie Germain a strange letter.

In it, he acknowledged her winning the institute’s prestigious Grand Mathematics Award for her mathematical work explaining how sound waves travel across 2D surfaces. Nevertheless, the letter contained no congratulations, mentioned from top to bottom that she was the only applicant, and admitted that she had not received a ticket to attend the award ceremony, which was scheduled for two days later. He reluctantly acknowledged that handwritten tickets could be produced on short notice if necessary.

Mr. Germain did not attend the ceremony.

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“Today, the Mathematics and Physical Sciences classes of the institute held a public session, a very large gathering that undoubtedly attracted those who wanted to meet the new breed of virtuoso, Miss Sophie Germain, who was to receive the Elastic Membrane Prize. The expectations of the public were disappointed: the young woman did not go to receive the trophy, which has never been received by anyone of the same sex in France,” newspaper Journal des Devas reported on the day’s events.

The award was the culmination of 10 years of research for German, a self-taught polymath. Born into a wealthy merchant family, she developed an interest in mathematics while reading in her father’s library during a period of seclusion during the French Revolution.

Her parents were not happy with her “unladylike” pursuits. They put out the fire that kept the house warm and took away her warm clothes in the hope that she would be too cold and uncomfortable to study. But when they went to bed, she took a candle, wrapped herself in a quilt and continued her mathematical studies. That’s how she taught herself number theory and calculus.

When the Ecole Polytechnique opened in 1794, women were prohibited from attending, but lecture notes were available to the public. She read those notes and began submitting answers to lecture questions under the pseudonym “Antoine Auguste Leblanc.” Under her pseudonym, Germain also began corresponding with some of the leading mathematicians of the time, including Carl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph-Louis Lagrange.

Around 1806, she became interested in the physics behind complex experiments. In his 1787 book, physicist and musician Ernst Chladny, also known as the “father of acoustics,” described a phenomenon in which a person could sprinkle sand on a glass plate and drag a violin bow across different surfaces and edges. Not only can the plates be played like a violin, but different geometric patterns are formed in the sand depending on how the plates are bent.

The French institute was offering an award for the third year in a row to mathematically describe the “Chladni figure” formed. No one else attempted a solution, and most believed that the existing mathematics of the time was insufficient to explain the phenomenon.

But for three years, Jermaine submitted his proposed solution. Her third proposal, submitted in 1816, was titled “Studies on the Vibration of Elastic Plates.” Although it was “awkward and clumsy” given the mathematics available at the time, it was nevertheless a great insight into the subject of 2D harmonic oscillations, or steadily moving waves.

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Ms. Germaine ultimately decided to skip the ceremony because she felt the committee did not respect her work enough. For example, her biggest rival, Simeon Poisson, was part of the award committee but refused to discuss the issue with her or speak publicly. However, not all of German’s contemporaries were so negative. Lagrange and Gauss strongly supported her research.

“But when a woman, because of her sex, customs, and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in getting used to troublesome problems, and yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates the most hidden, she is undoubtedly possessed of the noblest courage, extraordinary talent, and great genius,” Gauss wrote upon discovering his sex.

Germaine would continue his solitary mathematical research for decades.

Her work with French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre was a major advance in proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, which states that there are no three positive integers (a, b, c) that satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for integer values ​​of n greater than 2.

Germain showed that Fermat’s Last Theorem holds for a special class of primes, now called Germain primes, where both p and 2p+1 are primes. Her research formed the basis of the complete solution finally created by Andrew Wiles in 1994. Nevertheless, Germain’s theorem was only mentioned in a footnote in Legendre’s work.

In 1831, her long-time correspondent and mentor Gauss encouraged the University of Göttingen to award Germain an honorary degree. She died of breast cancer a few weeks before receiving the award.