1776-1831

French Mathematician

Among the achievements of Sophie Germain's career was her attempt at a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Her successes were all the more remarkable in light of the fact that she was largely self-taught and practiced at the fringes of a mathematical establishment largely closed to women at that time.

She was born Marie-Sophie Germain, the middle child of Ambroise-François and Marie-Madeleine Germain, in Paris on April 1, 1776. Later, she would drop the "Marie" because both her mother and her older sister also bore that name in hyphenated form.

In time, both of her sisters would marry successful men, but Sophie's own future—which held neither marriage nor children—was influenced by events that took place when she was 13 years old. That year was when the French Revolution began, and, although her father served in the revolutionary legislative assembly, the tumultuous events of...