June 26, 1831
To all my future mathematicians,
It's getting harder and harder to write but I must share with you some of my greatest works. In my last letter, I discussed how I had sent one final letter to Gauss and he never responded. Although I was saddened by this, I never stopped studying mathematics. I began looking for a new mentor.
In 1809, the French Academy of Sciences announced a contest to explain the vibration of elastic surfaces through mathematics. Of course this intrigued me! I began work on the two year contest and in 1811 was the only person to submit a response. Sadly from my lack of education, my submission was rejected. Lagrange helped me fix some errors and then I submitted again receiving honorable mention. That was not enough for me. I continued working on my theories and submitted for a third time. This time I won the grand prize, although admittedly, I had some shortcomings in my explanations. I continued writing and studying more about the theory of elasticity and believe that my work is and will be of great importance to the field.
Winning the contest prize was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me. That prize introduced me to even more prominent mathematicians and opened doors for me to attend classes at the academy, the first woman ever allowed to do so. The Institute de France praised me and invited me to attend their sessions. If you ask me, I think this was the highest honor I woman could ever receive!
Now, I'm sure many of you have heard of Fermat's Last Theorem. His theorem is shown below:
Until then,
Sophie
Sources:
Alkalay-Houlihan, Colleen. “Sophie Germain and Special Cases of Fermat's Last Theorem.”McGill University Math, McGill.
“Fermat's Last Theorem.” Wolfram MathWorld, Wolfram Alpha, mathworld.wolfram.com/FermatsLastTheorem.html.
Freeman, Larry. “Fermat's Last Theorem.” Sophie's Proof, Blogger, 30 Aug. 2005, fermatslasttheorem.blogspot.com/2005/08/sophies-proof.html.
Swift, Amanda. “Sophie Germain.” Sophie Germain, Apr. 1995, www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/germain.htm.
To all my future mathematicians,
It's getting harder and harder to write but I must share with you some of my greatest works. In my last letter, I discussed how I had sent one final letter to Gauss and he never responded. Although I was saddened by this, I never stopped studying mathematics. I began looking for a new mentor.
In 1809, the French Academy of Sciences announced a contest to explain the vibration of elastic surfaces through mathematics. Of course this intrigued me! I began work on the two year contest and in 1811 was the only person to submit a response. Sadly from my lack of education, my submission was rejected. Lagrange helped me fix some errors and then I submitted again receiving honorable mention. That was not enough for me. I continued working on my theories and submitted for a third time. This time I won the grand prize, although admittedly, I had some shortcomings in my explanations. I continued writing and studying more about the theory of elasticity and believe that my work is and will be of great importance to the field.
Winning the contest prize was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me. That prize introduced me to even more prominent mathematicians and opened doors for me to attend classes at the academy, the first woman ever allowed to do so. The Institute de France praised me and invited me to attend their sessions. If you ask me, I think this was the highest honor I woman could ever receive!
Now, I'm sure many of you have heard of Fermat's Last Theorem. His theorem is shown below:
He wrote this in the 1630s, it had been almost 200 years and not one person was able to prove any of it. I had a grand plan to prove this. Maybe my thoughts were bigger than my actual brain but I was sure I could do this. After much work, I was able to prove one major step of Fermat's theorem and sent my thoughts to the mathematician Legendre:
If xn + yn = zn and n is a prime ≥ 3 and 2n+1 is a prime, then n must divide xyz.I specifically looked at the case where n = 5. Little did I know at the time, I had proved case 1 of Fermat's last theorem which no other mathematician had been able to do yet, this was huge! Sadly, to this day I feel like I haven't gotten much recognition for my work. Maybe that will change one day.
Until then,
Sophie
Sources:
Alkalay-Houlihan, Colleen. “Sophie Germain and Special Cases of Fermat's Last Theorem.”McGill University Math, McGill.
“Fermat's Last Theorem.” Wolfram MathWorld, Wolfram Alpha, mathworld.wolfram.com/FermatsLastTheorem.html.
Freeman, Larry. “Fermat's Last Theorem.” Sophie's Proof, Blogger, 30 Aug. 2005, fermatslasttheorem.blogspot.com/2005/08/sophies-proof.html.
Swift, Amanda. “Sophie Germain.” Sophie Germain, Apr. 1995, www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/germain.htm.
"He wrote this in the 1630s, it had been almost 200 years and not one person was able to prove any of it." Either this is two sentences, or you need to add, "Though he wrote this...., it had been..."
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