Émilie du Châtelet translates Newton

1749 · Event

Working through her final pregnancy, often twenty hours a day, the Marquise du Châtelet — physicist, gambler, and Voltaire's collaborator and lover — finishes translating Newton's Principia into French, adding a commentary that recasts the proofs in modern calculus. She dies days after her daughter's birth; her translation, published a decade later, is still the standard French Principia.