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Boston Globe – February 22, 2007 -- Unraveling the
mystery of Marquise Du Châtelet. -- By Judith Maas --Judith
Zinsser's "La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise Du Châtelet,"
is at heart a mystery story, As a daughter, wife, and mother, the
marquise fulfilled her duties with aplomb. Born in Paris in 1706 to
a noble family, Gabrielle fimilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil studied
etiquette, speech, and deportment. At 18 she married the Marquis Du
Châtelet-Lomont, a military officer and member of one of France's
most elite families. She supervised her household, oversaw her
children's education, advanced the family's interests, and found
time to enjoy the pleasures of Paris, from shop ping excursions to
masked balls. How and why, then, did this apparently conventional
woman become a...
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Scientific American – February 2007 -- Why Aren't
More Women Physicists? -- By Karen A. Frenkel -- La Dame
D'Esprit: A Biography of The Marquise Du Châtelet by Judith P.
Zinsser, Viking, 2006 -- During the past 40 years, study after study
has addressed why more women do not become scientists. The question
is most apt for physics. Advanced physics degrees awarded to women
have always lagged, hitting a nadir at under 5 percent from the
1950s to the 1970s. Progress has been made since; in 2003, 193 women
(17.9 percent) received a Ph.D. in physics, according to the
National Science Foundation. But physics still trails the other
sciences. The flip side of the question is: Why and how did those
few prominent female physicists succeed? Historian Judith P.
Zinsser's La Dame d'Esprit and the profiles of women physicists in
Out of the Shadows unveil the scintillating lives of women who
overcame discrimination and made major contributions that went
largely unacknowledged.
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Baltimore Sun – January 28, 2007 -- Emerging from
Voltaire's shadow -- How the Marquise du Chatelet exceeded the
brilliance of her famous lover -- ... Americans owe a great deal to
the Enlightenment, the ideas and ideals of which helped to spawn
both the French and American revolutions. The Founding Fathers were
influenced by the writings and philosophies of the Enlightenment,
and the Bill of Rights evolved, in part, out of an American
interpretation of those ideas. After reading Judith P. Zinsser's
enthralling biography of Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil,
the Marquise du Chatelet, ten years in the making, one cannot fail
to place the Marquise at the center of that exciting, monumental
time. That she was a woman surrounded by brilliant, visionary men -
and met and even exceeded their standard of brilliance - makes her
story all the more compelling...
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New York Times – December 24, 2006 -- The French
Luminary’s Woman -- By CAROLINE WEBER -- Can we women have it
all? A professor of mine once told me that trying to have both a
career and a love life was a recipe for disaster. Coming from a
woman whose accomplishments I admired, the remark haunted me for a
long time. If only she had steered me instead toward the Marquise Du
Châtelet, whose inspiring example Judith P. Zinsser sets forth in
“La Dame d’Esprit,” the story of an 18th-century French noblewoman
who, undaunted by the prejudices of her era, “saw no contradictions”
in pursuing both a life of the heart and a life of the mind. As
befitted a lady of her standing, Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de
Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749), devoted herself
tirelessly to the management of her household and family estates...
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Library Journal – October 15, 2006-- La Dame d’Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise du Châtelet
--JUDITH P. ZINSSER. Viking, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 0-670-03800-8 --
This December will mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Emilie
du Châtelet (born Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil), the
Enlightenment mathematician and physicist whose renown comes down to
us chiefly owing to her relationship with Voltaire. Bodanis (E=mc)
makes this "great love affair of the Enlightenment" the central
story in his book, a revealing and at times penetrating account of
their passion, both for each other and for knowledge. The latter was
more forcefully demonstrated by du Châtelet, whose genius for what
was then called natural philosophy far exceeded Voltaire's. Bodanis
successfully paints a picture of an era and of a man and a woman
who, rather than thinking it wise to "Go placidly amid the noise and
haste," ventured forth with purpose...
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Publishers Weekly – September 4, 2006 -- La
Dame d’Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise du Châtelet -- JUDITH P.
ZINSSER. Viking, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 0-670-03800-8 -- The 300th
birthday of the 18th-century French noblewoman, scientist,
freethinker (she considered Jesus “a pious fraud”) and paramour of
Voltaire brings the second new biography. David Bodanis’s Passionate
Minds presents her life essentially as a romance novel. Historian
Zinsser (A History of Their Own) says more about her subject’s
scientific work, which groped toward a modern conception of kinetic
energy and included an influential recasting of Newton’s work on the
calculus. Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was certainly an emblematic...
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