| Description |
1 online resource (279 pages) |
| Series |
MAA spectrum |
|
MAA spectrum.
|
| Contents |
Cover -- copyright page -- title page -- Paris, France: 1789 -- Awakening -- Paris, France: 1790 -- Discovery -- Paris, France: 1791 -- Introspection -- Paris, France: 1792 -- Under Siege -- Paris, France: 1793 -- Upon the Threshold -- Intellectual Discovery -- Paris, France: 1794 -- Knocking on Heaven's Door -- Appendices -- Author's Note -- Sophie Germain Biographical Sketch -- Marie-Sophie Germain Timeline -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Index |
| Summary |
Sophie's Diary: A Mathematical Novel is a work of fiction inspired by French mathematician Sophie Germain. It chronicles the coming of age of a teenager learning mathematics on her own, growing up during the most turbulent years of the French Revolution. The fictionalized diary uses mathematics, intertwined with historically-accurate accounts of the social chaos that reigned in Paris between 1789 and 1794, to describe the learning journey of a remarkable girl that became the first and only woman in history to make a substantial contribution to the proof of French's Last Theorem. Sophie Germain was born in Paris in 1776. Little is known about her childhood or about her initiation into mathematics. Her first biographers wrote that, as a young woman, she assumed the name of a male student at the Ecole Polytechnique to submit her own work to Lagrange. Yet, no biography has explained how Germain studied mathematics before that time to encourage such boldness. Sophie's Diary is an attempt to put in perspective how a self-taught girl could have acquired the knowledge to enter the world of Lagrange's analysis |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-274) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Germain, Sophie, 1776-1831 -- Fiction
|
| SUBJECT |
Germain, Sophie, 1776-1831 fast |
| Subject |
Women mathematicians -- France -- Fiction
|
|
FICTION -- General.
|
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MATHEMATICS -- Recreations & Games.
|
|
Women mathematicians
|
| SUBJECT |
France -- History -- 1789-1793 -- Fiction
|
| Subject |
France
|
| Genre/Form |
Fiction
|
|
History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9781614445104 |
|
1614445109 |
|
