Seduced by Logic: Émilie du Châtelet, Mary Somerville, and the Newtonian Revolution

by Robyn Arianrhod

Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) and Mary Somerville (1780–1872) were among the leading natural philosophers and mathematicians of their age, celebrated for expounding and extending Newton’s Principia and for their own work in calculus, optics, gravity and energy.

We can only imagine what else they might have accomplished if they had been permitted to enrol at university and participate in the public life of the mind as fully as the men who they challenged and inspired.

Seduced by Logic is an exploration of passions both physical and metaphysical, and potential both realised and frustrated. It brings to life two remarkable women and the fundamental riddles of the universe that they worked on together across the centuries.

‘Émilie and Mary did lead fascinating and exemplary lives, whose details kept me turning the pages. Robyn Arianrhod’s book ... shows they both still serve as lighthouses, to use Colette’s candles by the sea, candles in the dark, who teach us never to despair.’
—Emily Grosholz, The Hudson Review

376 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 22, 2024

About the author

Robyn Arianrhod is an Australian science writer historian of science known for her works on the predecessors to Albert Einstein, on Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Somerville, and on Thomas Harriot.