The great love affair of the Enlightenment, featuring the scientist Emilie du Châtalet, the poet Voltaire, sword fights, book burnings, assorted kings, seditious verse, and the birth of the modern world
I spend my time with masons, carpenters, stonemasons—there’s no time to think of anything else! … But however difficult I may be to live with—and I can assure you I’ve been as difficult for Voltaire as for you—visit us and you will see a strange phenomenon: two individuals who’ve spent three months together, and who love each other more than ever …
If someone had told me two years ago I would be living like this, I wouldn’t have believed them.
—EMILIE to Richelieu
Come on: you know Voltaire admires you, and he’s worth being your friend. Don’t jump directly from France to the Pole without stopping here.
—EMILIE to Maupertuis
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Emilie’s great work, Principes mathématiques de la philosophies naturelle de Newton, traduits du latin par Mme du Châtelet, was published ten years after her death, when the return of Halley’s Comet in 1759 stimulated a burst of interest in Newtonian mechanics.
— David Bodanis