Sophie Germain was a French mathematician who made significant contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics, mechanics, and physics. Germain is best known for her work on elasticity, which she developed in her 1807 paper “Mémoire sur la théorie des surfaces élastiques.”
Germain was born in 1776 in Paris, France. She attended the Ecole Polytechnique, where she studied mathematics and physics. Germain graduated from the school in 1799 with a degree in mathematics.
She published her work on Fermat’s Last Theorem
Germain made significant contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics, mechanics, and physics. In 1816, she published her work on Fermat’s Last Theorem, which showed that the theorem is true for all primes except for those that are a power of two. Germain also made important contributions to the field of optics.
Germain died in 1831 in Paris, France. In 1832, she was posthumously awarded the Copley Medal.
