Sophie Germain
  |
|
|
Youth Sections
"The Braves Arise " |
|
 |
|
 ociety always has its norms. Expectations are set us based on who we are, how we look, where we live, etc.. It is up to us if we choose to meet those expectations or not. Sophie Germain was born in Paris on April 1st 1776. She was born to wealthy parents and was not expected to independently contribute to society in any way other than getting married. But from a young age, her parents began to notice that her interests were not that of a young girl. It is said that after she heard that Archimedes died because he was so enraptured by his study of mathematics that he did not notice the incoming Roman Soldier who killed him, she decided to delve into her studies with that same dedication. In an attempt to stifle her new passion, her parents disallowed her to study during the day and took away her candles so she wouldn’t study at night. Yet she was adamant on pursuing mathematics, and so her parents finally gave in. Being a female, she was not allowed to attend the local technical academy, Ecole Polytechnique, yet she tried to still benefit from the lectures by reading her friends’ lecture notes and passing in papers under the pseudonym Monsier LeBlanc who was a former student at the academy but had since dropped out. Her professor, Joseph Louis Legrange became suspicious when he graded M. LeBlanc’s papers and they were surprisingly well calculated. He eventually found out that M. LeBlanc was in fact Sophie Germain and acknowledged her talent for mathematics, though remaining sexist in his views. Sophie’s greatest mentor was the renowned mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, with whom she talked through letters about their recent discoveries in the field of number theory. Although they never met, Gauss greatly praised Sophie when talking to his other colleagues. It was during this time where she did her acclaimed work on Fermat’s Last Theorem. When German physicist Ernst FF Chland proposed a contest as well as a prize to the person that could make a “Formulated mathematical theory of elastic surfaces,” Sophie entered the contest three times. Twice, she was the only person who entered but was not acknowledged due to lack of classical mathematical training. Though her concepts were clear, they were not accepted due to format issues. The third time she entered, after getting it revised by esteemed mathematicians, she won. Her paper was still criticized due to lack of formality. It is said that her paper built some of the foundations of elasticity and vibration through elasticity. Elements of her paper were incorporated when building the Eiffel Tower.  She was also a philosopher. She had two books of her philosophical writings published post-mortem. Throughout these books she maintained the connection between science, math, and the humanities. She died in 1831 at the age of 55, from breast cancer. Germain made significant advancement to geometry, as her work with elasticity was completely innovative, and was incorporated in different versions of civil engineering. She changed the way engineers deal with geometry when approaching a situation. She also wrote a book about the curvatures of objects. She used this to help her find the answer to E. FF Chland’s question. She knew that through a plane, there are two principal curvatures and you multiply those to give you the Gaussinian Curvature. The Gaussinian Curvature is an intrinsic curvature, so it only pertains to inside the plane. But the Mean Curvature (idea she created) is half the principal curvatures and extrinsic so it pertains with outside the plane. By substituting the Mean Curvature into her work in elastic theory, she cleaned up her numbers, as the mean curvature of a plane is zero. Sophie Germain is a prime example of not letting society enforce their expectations on you or limit you to set standards. She decided to pursue what she had a passion for at that is something to be commended. Although she was not the most talented, neat mathematician, her lack of schooling provided her a different, new way of thinking. Her innovations have had a direct impact on the subsequent mathematical innovations. She overcame a very prejudiced society and showed how gender should not define anyone. She died before her time came, and from a cause that still affects many women today. Sophie Germain was a women far ahead of her time, who was not afraid to aspire to be something more than what society would allow her to be. |
|
 |
|
*Arman Koul is a 15 years old, 9th grade student from Andover, MA. He enjoys reading, music and sports, not necessarily in that order.. |
|
|
|
|
| Copyrights © 2007 Shehjar online and KashmirGroup.com. Any content, including but not limited to text, software, music, sound, photographs, video, graphics or other material contained may not be modified, copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, or distributed in any form or context without written permission. Terms & Conditions. |