Product Description

It was 1733 when the poet and philosopher Voltaire met Emilie du Châtelet, a beguiling--and married--aristocrat who would one day popularize Newton's arcane ideas and pave the way for Einstein's theories. In an era when women were rarely permitted any serious schooling, this twenty-seven-year-old's nimble conversation and unusual brilliance led Voltaire, then in his late thirties, to wonder "Why did you only reach me so late?" They fell immediately and passionately in love.

Through the prism of their tumultuous fifteen-year relationship we see the crumbling of an ancient social order and the birth of the Enlightenment. Together they rebuilt a dilapidated and isolated rural chateau at Cirey where they conducted scientific experiments, entertained many of the leading thinkers of the burgeoning scientific revolution, and developed radical ideas about the monarchy, the nature of free will, the subordination of women, and the separation of church and state.

But their time together was filled with far more than reading and intellectual conversation. There were frantic gallopings across France, sword fights in front of besieged German fortresses, and a deadly burning of Voltaire's books by the public executioner at the base of the grand stairwell of the Palais de Justice in Paris. The pair survived court intrigues at Versailles, narrow escapes from agents of the king, a covert mission to the idyllic lakeside retreat of Frederick the Great of Prussia, forays to the royal gambling tables (where Emilie put her mathematical acumen to lucrative use), and intense affairs that bent but did not break their bond.

Along with its riveting portrait of Voltaire as a vulnerable romantic, Passionate Minds at last does justice to the supremely unconventional life and remarkable achievements of Emilie du Châtelet--including her work on the science of fire and the nature of light. Long overlooked, her story tells us much about women's lives at the time of the Enlightenment. Equally important, it demonstrates how this graceful, quick-witted, and attractive woman worked out the concepts that would lead directly to the "squared" part of Einstein's revolutionary equation--E=mc2.

Based on a rich array of letters and other writings from houseguests, neighbors, scientists, and even police reports, Passionate Minds is both panoramic and intimate in feeling. It is an unforgettable love story and a vivid rendering of the birth of modern ideas.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #371813 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Released on: 2006-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The passion overshadows the minds in this breathless account of the decade-long love affair between Emilie du Châtelet, a rare 18th-century woman scientist who wrote an influential commentary on Newton's physics, and the notorious Enlightenment thinker Voltaire. There's plenty of action and romance in the story, set against a backdrop of haughty aristocrats, blasé adulteries and rancid court intrigues. Mme. du Châtelet and Voltaire fall madly in love, quarrel, take other lovers, split up, reconcile, renovate their chateau and again take other lovers. Meanwhile, their talks about (and inept experiments with) physics and philosophy, the author contends, spurred both to dizzying heights of creativity. Bodanis (E=mc2) adopts a mild feminist stance in styling du Châtelet as a brilliant intellect thwarted by male chauvinism. But Bodanis's frustratingly sketchy rendition of du Châtelet's work makes a weak case for the claim that she was a major scientific figure. With the science given short shrift, du Châtelet seems defined mainly by her relationships with men and is effortlessly upstaged by Voltaire as he alternately jousts with, flees from and kowtows to king and church. Bodanis's crowd-pleasing focus on lively domestic melodrama—complete with a vignette of du Châtelet "lounging naked with a handsome corsair's son"—belittles rather than enhances her intellectual stature. (Oct.)
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Review
Bodanis captures well the spirit of adventure that animated their love and the specter of tragedy that haunted it. -- John Cruickshank, The Chicago Sun-Times

Review
“Passionate Minds is both glorious and heartbreaking. For two centuries Emilie du Châtelet has been a quiet heroine, her name rarely invoked outside the science classroom. Now David Bodanis has not only brought her to life, but also uncovered one of the great love affairs of the eighteenth century.”
—Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

“Installs Emilie in the front row of the pantheon of Enlightenment natural philosophers.”
—The Times (London)

“Fast-paced, engrossing, and enlightening, Passionate Minds is a ‘can’t put it down’ read—
a mélange of colorful, fascinating characters, and ideas captured in an irresistible mix."
—Barbara Goldsmith, author of Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

“Highly entertaining . . . and holds the most agreeable surprises. . . . A story well worth the retelling, and Bodanis tells it vividly.”
—Sunday Times (London)

“Riveting, moving, often hilarious, Passionate Minds is gritty social history and hard science and romance all rolled into one. Both fast-paced and profound, Passionate Minds is an intellectual roller-coaster ride that puts the excitement back into the Enlightenment.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Slammerkin

“This is an absorbing tale based on extensive research, and it takes full advantage of both heroes’ propensity for coining quotable witticisms. Bodanis eloquently evokes women’s restricted lives during the eighteenth century.”
—The Guardian

“Bodanis is good at explaining complex science and skillful in weaving together two unconventional, complex, and intellectually reforming lives. . . . David Bodanis has taken up one of the great stories of the period, a potent mix of romance, science, and history. . . . There is never a dull moment.”
—Sunday Telegraph

Customer Reviews

Who saves sex and science can't mix?
After reading David Bodanis' previous work, E=mc2: A History of the World's Most Famous Equation , I was hooked on this author's way of presenting science and research that was neither boring nor pendantic. Instead, he takes the time to explain how a particular idea or discovery relates to the modern reader, and presents researchers not just as dodgy old coots in laboratories muttering in arcane languages.

Instead, Passionate Minds takes a very different route. It begins with a child, a little girl, who grew up in the Paris of Louis XV, a time when women were expected to be not much more than brood mares and ornamental objects. But Emilie was very different. For one thing, she was clever, with a mind that could grasp not just the social niceties of the day -- that of being able to make conversation and turn a witty phrase -- but also understand mathematics and the beginings of modern science, and a particular love of astronomy. To say taht Emilie was unusual for her time is an understatement. Her father adored her, and did everything he could to encourage her studies. Her mother, on the other hand, wasn't too pleased by the intellectual leanings of her daughter's mind, wishing that she would instead be a bit more interested in fashion and young men. Emilie does marry, to a wealthy aristocrat, and it's after here that the story takes on an interesting twist.

Today, most marriages are regarded as romantic attachments, but in the eighteenth century, you married more as a business arrangement. A couple married for financial security, or for social status, and Emilie was lucky enough to get both in her husband. She became Madame la Marquise du Chatellet, and after presenting her husband with two children, she embarked on a series of affairs. Adultery, while certainly a sin, was acceptable among the aristocracy so long as decency and discretion was maintained -- it was incorrect to visit both your wife and your mistress when they were in the same town, for example. And Emilie was just as unusual with her lovers as she was with her studies -- one would become the model for Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the one who would make the greatest change in her life was the writer known as Voltaire.

Voltaire, best known for his play Candide, was a bit of a troublemaker. His Letters from England were publically burned, and he was no stranger to exile either. And when he and Emilie met, they recognized in each other kindred spirits. Voltaire was charming, had made a fortune in wheat speculation, and even became good friends with Emilie's husband. Together they would refurbish a chateau in the countryside that would become a center for learning and scientific exploration, and able to encourage each other in their work, along with maintaining a physical relationship.

But when Emilie's work managed to receive more acclaim than Voltaire's, the relationship had a rift. And stung, Emilie turned to her one consolation -- Newtonian physics -- and began the work that would gain her the most recognition.

How the rest of the story plays out is what makes this one so interesting. Emilie managed to stay friends with Voltaire, even if the sexual aspects of their relationship had ended. Bodanis manages to hit the high points of each person's life, arranging it more or less in chronological order, and takes the time to digress now and then to explain how a social situation or discovery for a modern reader, and presents everything in a tidy, fairly coherent whole. There's plenty of scandal and humor in here, some of it rather tongue-in-cheek, and plenty to whet the reader's appetite for more.

I found myself wanting to know more about Emilie and Voltaire and Bodanis kindly supplies not just notes with that have suggested reading, but also an extensive bibliography. An insert of black and white photos is supplied as well, which help to give a face to many of the names and places. The narrative itself moves along quite briskly, and keeps explainations and digressions to a minimum, and never gets bogged down in the details.

For anyone who is interested in the birth of the Enlightenment, the role of women in a very male society, or wonders how scientific research got going, I would happily suggest this book. It's geared for the general reader, and makes a grand introduction to history in a very appealling way. Don't miss this one!

There is to be a new biography of Emilie published later on this year, by Judith Zinsser called La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise du Chatelet

Deftly written, much to be enjoyed
It is difficult enough to write engagingly about someone who died over two hundred years ago; David Bodanis has written an excellent history not merely of one interesting person but of two: Emilie du Chatelet and her sometime lover Voltaire. In a narrative spanning (in detail) nearly two decades, in which Voltaire's fortunes rose, sank, rose, sank, and rose again and in which Emilie herself underwent tribulations both common (failed love affairs) and uncommon (struggling to create a place for herself amongst the first rank of European thinkers), Bodanis succeeds admirably in engaging our interest and sympathy.

Most readers are unlikely to be familiar with the oppressive manners peculiar to the Courts of Louis XIV and his even more amazingly doltish son Louis XV; Bodanis gives us what we need to know in order to make sense of the maze through which Voltaire so frequently stumbled and through which the much more quick-witted Emilie navigated with efficiency.

Likewise we are given enough context to follow the twists and turns of these twinned lives, without feeling either that Bodanis is patronising us or providing unnecessary embellishments. It's a tour-de-force of delicate writing that allows the reader to sail along on the current of Bodanis' painstakingly assembled knowledge, all the while growing deeper in our attachment to the two central characters. This is the more remarkable in that Bodanis shelters us only a little from their failings. Voltaire is shown as vainglorious and weak; Emilie can be glimpsed as being rather too intense for most mortals to cope with. Yet together they made sense of the world and of each other, and the reader feels genuine pity and sadness as their relationship gradually changes. The fiery intensity of their first love, combining as it did intellectual fireworks with physical glories, fades to the embers of mutual affection and understanding. Perhaps the finest testament to Bodanis' skill as a narrator is the fact that Emilie's premature death from childbirth, when it comes, is deeply moving. At that moment, something wonderful was taken from the world and Bodanis' skill lies in making us feel that loss even after the passage of two and a half centuries.

Bodanis' touch is sure and slips only twice, on small technical matters. The exposition on Liebenitz' method to solve the problem of curvature is probably more confusing than helpful, and would be easier to understand in the normal language of calculus. And when Emilie cleverly purchases, for a lump sum, the rights to future tax revenues this is described as the first instance of derivatives trading whereas in fact it's an example of using net present value (of a future income stream) to determine the correct present price of an asset (or in this case, a lower-than-correct price, to ensure that the nimble Emilie can make a handsome profit from the intellectually indolent aristocrats who owned the rights to tax the French populace). But these are tiny cavils and in no way detract from this marvelous little book.

For anyone curious about Voltaire (the man who brought us Micromegas and Candide), the birth of the Enlightenment, and the extraordinary person that was Emilie du Chatalet, this is a book that must be read for both pleasure and education.

A Unique Woman in a Strange Time
Emilie du Chatelet was a most interesting women for her time, or for any time. A member of the French aristocracy she was adored by her father and taught unwomanly things like sword fighting, riding, languages, literature and mathematics. She also liked to dance, was a passable performer on the harpsichord, sang opera, and was an amateur actress.

As a scientist she is remembered as a footnote, if you will, to the other scientists of the day. She did research into fire, and developed theories of what is now called infra-red radiation. In the year of her death she completed the work regarded as her outstanding achievement: her translation into French, with her own commentary, of Newton's celebrated Principia Mathematica, including her derivation from its principles of mechanics the notion of conservation of energy.

She also led a life we would consider somewhat scandalous. After dutifully presenting her husband with the children expected of an arranged marriage they agreed to live apart with each taking other lovers.

I was struck with the fact that she died in 1749. Had she been born fifty years later, it is likely that she would have faced the guillotine like so many others.