Marie-Sophie Germain's Life And Accomplishments

Marie-Sophie Germain was born in Paris, France on April 1, 1776. Since she lived in a house with three other woman whose first name was also Marie, she went by Sophie. At the start of the French Revolutionary War in 1789, Germain’s parents deemed it unsafe for their daughter to be outside, causing Germain to spend a large amount of time inside the house. To occupy herself, Germain spent her days in her father’s vast library, consuming novels. One day, Germain came across the legend of Archimedes’ death. It was said that Archimedes was so absorbed in studying geometry that he did not respond to questioning from a Roman soldier and, as a result, was speared to death. Germain reasoned that if someone could be so engaged in mathematics that they could become oblivious to danger, math must be an interesting subject. It was then that Germain decided to devote some serious attention to math. In fact, Germain became so devoted to math that she made it her goal to read all of the mathematics books in her father’s library. In order to do so, Germain had to teach herself Latin and Greek first so that she could learn classical math. Despite the overwhelming task at hand, Germain successfully completed her goal. It took her five years to read all of the mathematics related books in her father’s library, starting from the

Almost thirty years had passed since their first correspondence, and Germain wanted to revisit number theory. Moreover, Gauss wished to convince the University of Gottingen to bestow an honorary degree to Germain for her significant contributions to mathematics and physics. However, before Germain could receive this degree, she died from breast cancer in 1831 at the age of 55. Germain had been battling pain for the past two years of her life, but had still managed to pursue her studying. Had Germain been able to receive her degree, she would have met Carl Gauss in person for the first