French noble lady born at Hôtel de Breteuil, Paris, one of the first people to explain the calculus of Newton and Leibniz and always debated the comparison between Newtonian natural philosophy and the covitalism of Lebniz. Descended from an illustrious, noble and wealthy French family, she was the daughter of Baron De Breteuil, then Introducer of Ambassadors at the court of King Louis XIV of France, at Versailles.
Very intelligent, he received an excellent education from his tutors and tutors in the castle of Breteuil, and always showed great facility in learning languages, sciences and mathematics. At twelve, she read, spoke, and wrote fluent German, Latin, and Greek, and spent most of her time locked in her rooms, studying. She also had artistic talent and loved to dance, play the harpsichord and sing opera arias, did theater and, in her spare time, practiced horseback riding.
At the age of 19, she married for convenience the Marquis Florent-Claude Du Châtelet-Lomont, a noble knight and officer in the Army of His Christian Majesty. After three children the marriage was dissolved by mutual agreement, as she did not adapt to her husband's military life, she retreated to the halls of life at the court of Versailles. At 24 aoos, he had Louis François Armand de Vignerot Du Plessis, 3rd Duke of Richelieu as his lover (1696-1788) for about a year and a half and with whom he deepened his knowledge of literature and philosophy.
She then began studying geometry with the Academy of Sciences mathematician, astronomer and physicist Moreau de Maupertuis, an ardent supporter of Newton's theories. She met Voltaire (1733), ten years her senior, with whom she would have a long romance and carry out a great number of experiments. He brought her closer to the Duke of Richelieu and enabled her to be introduced into scientific and government circles. She participated (1737) in a competition of the Academy of Sciences of France, for the best essay on the nature of fire. She reviewed Newton's gravitational theory which she published in the Journal des Savants a year later. She wrote a physics text in French entitled Institucións de Physics, published anonymously (1740).
Pregnant by one of her lovers, Jean-François, Marquis de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), initiated (1745) an annotated translation of Newton's Principia, but only published posthumously ten years later (1759). Predicting a fatality, she finishes the translation just before giving birth to a daughter at the Palacio Ducal de Lunéville. She died a few days later of postpartum problems and Polish King Stanislao I ordered that national funerals be held in her honor, and she was buried in Lunéville Cathedral. To complete her tragic affair of less than two years with Captain Saint-Lambert, the child did not survive either.
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG
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COSTA, Keilla Renata. "Gabrielle-Émilie le Tonnelier De Breteuil"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/gabrielle-emilie.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.
