After spending the incredible $10,000 gift from the Woman’s Educational Society, we here at Special Collections decided we weren’t quite finished acquiring important books related to women’s history.

Members of the faculty of CC’s Feminist and Gender Studies program had directed us to Duke University’s Project Vox, which in turn called our attention to Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), an important and influential scientist. We were able to purchase two editions of Émilie du Châtelet’s Institutions de Physique: the first edition, in French, from 1740, which was published anonymously; and an Italian translation, with attribution, published in 1743.

If you’re not fluent in French or Italian but you’d like to know more about du Châtelet, you might try David Bodanis’s 2006 book Passionate Minds, which is subtitled “the great love affair of the Enlightenment, featuring the scientist Emilie Du Châtelet, the poet Voltaire, sword fights, book burnings, assorted kings, seditious verse, and the birth of the modern world.” It’s available at the CC library.