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Sophie Germain: or Was Gauss a feminist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Nick Mackinnon
Nick Mackinnon*
Affiliation:
Winchester College
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Extract

This article is focussed on a letter that perhaps the greatest mathematician ever, Carl Frederich Gauss, sent to a female mathematician, Sophie Germain. The letter is interesting because it is the first that Gauss wrote to Germain in the knowledge that she was a woman, and it contains a piece of mathematics that reveals better than the text of the letter what Gauss really thought of Germain. To put the letter in context I shall give some of Germain’s biography and also briefly describe female mathematicians that pre-date Germain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 74 , Issue 470 , December 1990 , pp. 346 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1990 

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References

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