thedailycosmos:

Happy 318th Birthday, Voltaire!

the-daily-cosmos:

Voltaire and Emilie in Castle Cirey

 In the frontispiece to Voltaire’s interpretation of Isaac Newton’s work, Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton (1738), the philosophe sits translating the inspired work of Newton. Voltaire’s manuscript is illuminated by seemingly divine light coming from Newton himself, reflected down to Voltaire by a muse, representing Voltaire’s lover Émilie du Châtelet—who actually translated Newton and collaborated with Voltaire to make sense of Newton’s work.

tiny-librarian:

The first, Emilie du Chatelet, was a woman cut to a superhuman scale. “A genius in virtually every realm of mathematics,” she outsmarted the leading male scholars of her day. In addition, she looked like a celebrity model, loved like a Lotharia, and lived like a sultana. “The wench,” said a Romeo of the age, “is formidable.” “The most brilliant member of her sex in Europe,” she was also a “passionate,” magisterial siren who captured and held the two beaux du jour of Paris, the duc de Richelieu and Voltaire.

Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love

This woman is my hero.