Cosmic Debates: Descartes vs. Newton

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe. Emilie du Châtelet, 1706-49, created a translation of Newton’s Principia from Latin into French that helped spread the light of mathematics on the emerging science, and her own book Institutions de Physique, with its lessons on physics, was welcomed as profound. She had the privileges of wealth and aristocracy, yet had to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual in a world of ideas that was almost exclusively male. With

Patricia Fara Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

David Wootton Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York

And

Judith Zinsser Professor Emerita of History at Miami University of Ohio and biographer of Emilie du Châtelet.

Producer: Simon Tillotson