
Emilie du Châtelet and her work on Newton's Principia - pseudolus
https://narratively.com/the-pregnant-scientist-who-raced-against-death-to-transform-physics/
======
jfengel
Odd that the article doesn't mention what is arguably her most important
contribution: conservation of energy, which isn't one of Newton's laws.
Physics was very unformed at the time, even after the publication of
Principia, and people were fumbling around to formalize concepts we take for
granted now.

~~~
lucas_membrane
Very odd that energy is not mentioned at all in the article. I do not believe
that she conceived of conservation of energy in the modern sense, where energy
includes heat and chemical energy, but she saw that Newton's laws of motion
conserved something besides momentum, and she somehow tested that
experimentally for some mechanical systems. Anyone have more info on this?

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vikramkr
According to the wiki on her, her commentary on the principia included "a
profound contribution to Newtonian mechanics—the postulate of an additional
conservation law for total energy, of which kinetic energy of motion is one
element. This led to her conceptualization of energy as such, and to derive
its quantitative relationships to the mass and velocity of an object."

So no, it wasn't just a translation of the principia. It seems she was also a
philosopher and an early financial pioneer in developing financial
derivatives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet)

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btrettel
I think scientific translations are undervalued in academia and the general
public. Whether or not a direct scientific discovery is made is irrelevant in
my view, as this work enables _other_ discoveries to be made.

Still, making a good translation can require deep understanding of the subject
and offers plenty of opportunity for scientific discovery. The translator can
be one of the first few to understand an important work. I think most people
would agree that understanding an important work early can be advantageous. At
least a few of the scientific contributions I've made were motivated by things
I translated, as appears to also be the case for Émilie du Châtelet.

An acquaintance of mine in linguistics told me that translations are treated
as roughly equivalent to a conference paper in linguistics, where journal
articles are considered first-class. I think this setup is better than the
status-quo in engineering, CS, physics, or math where translations are often
treated as a waste of time.

Today, most science is published in English, but for problems which have
existed for a long time, it can be worthwhile to consult the foreign "archival
literature" for important papers that haven't been translated or appreciated.
(Or even digitized, frequently!)

Edit: If there's a particular paper you're interested in finding a translation
of, I'd recommend looking at this Stack Exchange post I made about locating
existing translations:
[https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/93209/31143](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/93209/31143)

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ajna91
From wikipedia, it seems that her translation became the standard in France
which helped drive the scientific revolution in mainland Europe.

Furthermore:

"Her commentary includes a profound contribution to Newtonian mechanics—the
postulate of an additional conservation law for total energy, of which kinetic
energy of motion is one element. This led to her conceptualization of energy
as such, and to derive its quantitative relationships to the mass and velocity
of an object."

------
dang
All: we've replaced the baity title above. Please stay on the interesting side
of this topic and ignore whatever reflexive reactions it may provoke. All that
is predictable and we're here to learn something new. Flamewar comments impede
that; they're agitating in a way that feels exciting, but intellectually
they're just boring.

~~~
rayiner
The new title isn’t accurate either. She didn’t produce a translation, she
produced a commentary. It included substantial original work addressing the 60
years of criticism of Newton’s theories. Moreover:

> du Châtelet took the idiosyncratic mathematical proofs relating to the laws
> of attraction that had been most scrutinized by Newton’s critics and recast
> his geometrical equations into integral calculus.

This is an important point vis-a-vis the history of calculus. Newton used a
geometric formulation of calculus. The continent, meanwhile, and eventually
everyone else, use Liebniz’s formulation of calculus. That engendered a
something of a divide that kept people on the continent from crediting
Newton’s work. In addressing criticisms of Newton’s work, du Chatelet redid
Newton’s equations using Liebniz’s formulation of calculus. It’s not
necessarily click bait to say that was transformative, given that a lot of
subsequent development of calculus and physics happened in France.

~~~
nyc111
> du Chatelet redid Newton’s equations using Liebniz’s formulation of
> calculus.

Newton did not use equations in his book, it was all done geometrically and
with proportions.

~~~
acqq
> Newton did not use equations in his book

Correct, in the sense that there's no explicit equality sign and the left and
right side of the expression. There are expressions though (I see them e.g. in
Book II).

But what surely nobody would find there is calculus as we know it today, all
explanations are indeed geometrical there.

So rayner's claim "Newton used a geometric formulation of calculus" can be
accepted (although the "calculus" was not explicit at all, but just a hidden
"guiding line"), and even more that it was an immense work reinterpreting
Newton's ideas to something easier to follow and prove (to those equipped with
the knowledge of Leibniz's notation).

From the article we comment:

"du Châtelet took the idiosyncratic mathematical proofs relating to the laws
of attraction that had been most scrutinized by Newton’s critics and recast
his geometrical equations into integral calculus."

Her "commentary" should surely be considered one of fundamental "On The
Shoulders of Giants" set of texts.

(Btw: it's "Leibniz" or "Leibnitz". The "ie" is a sure typo.)

(One more warning, as if the other reactions weren't enough: the page on the
site is structured so that when seen in Firefox reader view (at least in my
case) one gets a totally different story! (the one from here:
[https://narratively.com/the-secret-revenge-of-an-assault-
sur...](https://narratively.com/the-secret-revenge-of-an-assault-survivor/) I
haven't analyzed how that substitution happen). The story should be about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet)
)

------
VRay
More info about Émilie du Châtelet and her work on her Wiki page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3%A2telet)

------
dchichkov
Sounds like some of the choices were suboptimal. In particular, sleeping 4
hours a night is ridiculously unhealthy. She might have actually lived much
longer and kept her daughter alive, if she'd only kept 7-8 hours of night
sleep. Seclusion and withdrawal from society is also not particularly healthy.

But. Amazing.

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meowface
The "baity" part of it was by far the most interesting part, for me. The title
once sounded like the premise for a potentially amazing movie, and now just
seems boring and inapplicable for me and most other readers who otherwise
would've clicked it with the previous title. (Not to knock the value of
translating scientific works.)

If I were you, I'd retain some aspect of the "race against the clock before
your probable untimely death which you know is soon coming" portion. Some
baitiness is unavoidable when that's the story.

The misogynist trolls will probably flock to a comment section like this
regardless, if there's something about a female technologist or scientist in
the title. I think removing the old title is kind of letting them win.

~~~
dang
It's standard HN moderation to replace baity titles. Basically, it's the
headline writers' job to sex up the title and make everything sound like a car
chase, and it's our job to knock it back to size so readers can attend to the
substance.

Part of the experiment of HN is to learn, together, how to calm ourselves down
so we can find the quieter sort of material genuinely interesting again.
There's plenty that's interesting here.

(We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22199116.](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22199116.))

~~~
meowface
I agree "The Pregnant Scientist Who Raced Against Death to Transform Physics"
was way too extreme and in need of changing, but I still think totally
neutering it is burying the lede.

------
ngcc_hk
The reading option part is interesting.

The story. Well cultural shock a bit and sympathy a bit, and equal opportunity
concern a bit;

... but not that interesting. Sorry. Did fall into the bait though :-)

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lopmotr
Her work was a translation of Newton's Principia into French? That's good and
all, but it's not scientific discovery. It's understandable that she's not
widely recognized if she didn't make any important discoveries.

~~~
dang
" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
l10001
Could you stop your mindless dictatorial attitude? The title says "work on
Newton's Principia", which suggests at least minor original contributions to
the work itself.

Who do you think you are to rudely lecture people who may be more qualified
than yourself?

You are the one who is constantly rude here.

~~~
dang
I changed the title after that comment was posted—first to "translation of",
and then to "work on" because
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22199282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22199282)
argued—apparently reasonably—that she made contributions beyond translation.
"Working on X" is standard English for a scholar studying something. It
doesn't imply that they're adding to X itself. Harold Bloom worked on
Shakespeare, but not even he would say that he contributed to Shakespeare's
plays.

I'm sorry to come across as rude, mindless, and dictatorial. That's definitely
not the intention. The intention is to prevent HN threads from getting stuck
in local flamewar states that tend to burn like garbage fires and give off
fumes rather than information. That's a big problem on a site like this—in
fact it's the biggest problem on a site like this. It doesn't, alas, mean that
we make every call correctly. If you read lopmotr's GP comment in isolation
and without the flamewar problem in mind, it is probably fine.

