Exposé anglais sur Sophie Germain

« Sophie Germain Intro : In 1806, Carl Friedrich Gauss was recognized as one of the best mathematicians of his time.

At this moment he answered a letter of a mysterious mathematician called Antoine Auguste LeBlanc with whom he communicated since 2 years.

This Mr LeBlanc impressed Mr Gauss, as a consequence he encouraged him to continue his mathematical work and he saw in him a worthy successor.

But Mr Gauss didn’t know something : in one month he will discover the true identity of this person.

Indeed this person was in reality called Sophie Germain. Chapter 1: A passionate girl Sophie Germain was born on the first of April 1776, into a bourgeois family.

She discovered mathematics at the age of 13 through her parents' library, where she discovered a book called : "L'histoire des mathématiques" written by Montucla. The young girl then developed a boundless passion for math and she learnt it alone.

She never backed down from her desire to learn this subject, even in the face of her father, who would go so far as to confiscate candles to prevent her from studying at night. In 1794, she managed to acquire lectures from the College Polytechnique, an institution exclusively reserved for men.

The professor at the time, the great Joseph Louis Lagrange, used to exchange written correspondence with his students.

It was during this time that Germain assumed the identity of a student at the school, someone called Antoine Auguste Leblanc, to initiate correspondence with Lagrange.

Impressed by Leblanc's faculties and analytical rigor, Lagrange, after a few months, decided to summon him for a meeting, as he never went to class.

As a consequence Lagrange discovered the true identity of Sophie Germain and the two of them became friends and worked together. Then, Sophie became fully integrated into the world of Parisian mathematics, and famous mathematicians maintained regular correspondence with her. In 1801 she read "Disquisitiones arithmeticae” , a book written by Carl Friedrich Gauss, certainly considered the greatest mathematician of the time. In 1804, she sent him a letter in which she ventures to confront the Holy Grail of the mathematician of the era: the proof of Fermat's last theorem.

However, in her ongoing effort to lend credibility to her work, she signs it with her old pseudonym: Mr.

Leblanc. Impressed by her extremely original approach, likely stemming from her self-taught nature, Gauss initiates a two-year correspondence with Mr.

Leblanc.

When Gauss learnt the true identity of Sophie Germain in 1806, he congratulated her for succeeding in entering the world of mathematics despite the obstacles faced by women. Chapter 2: The Academy of Sciences Prize Simultaneously with her correspondence with Gauss, Germain closely follows a prize offered by the Academy of Sciences. In 1808, the physicist and musician Ernst Chladni gave a lecture in which he covers a copper plate with very fine sand and then rubs it with a violin bow.

The plate not only started to vibrate and emit a sound but, more importantly, mysterious geometric figures appeared on the plate. The astonishing phenomenon, then called "vibrating plates," captured the attention of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who requested the French Academy to award a prize to the researcher who can adequately explain this phenomenon.

In 1811, precisely on October 21, only one paper was submitted to the members of the commission responsible for awarding the prize.

Unfortunately, the main equation Germain had formulated to model the vibration problem was incorrect, and the jury did not award the prize to Germain.

However, as only one candidate had submitted her paper on time, and considering that the allotted time was too short, the academy decided to launch a second prize for the explanation of this phenomenon, with a deadline in 1813.

This time, unlike.... »