Passionate Minds: the great Enlightenment love affair
David Bodanis Little, Brown, 336pp, £17.99
ISBN 0316730874
Émilie du Châtelet was not a conventional scientist. Far from being a bespectacled boffin stuck in a lab, she was an elegant aristocrat of the ancien régime. Renowned for her beauty, quick wit and racing mind, she fought sword duels, fled through the night from Louis XV's agents, seduced and dismissed Versailles' leading womaniser, and finally found both intellectual and sexual joy with the great philosophe Voltaire. Until now she has been lost in Voltaire's shadow, confined to being a mere handmaiden for revolutionary aperçus of the time. David Bodanis brings her many talents to boisterous life.
With obvious amusement, Bodanis turns the tables on Voltaire. The philosopher knew, for instance, that Newton's mathematical theories were important, but it was to his mistress that he turned to understand those theories and their relevance for rational thought. Indeed, in charting du Châtelet's investigation into the properties of light, Bodanis makes a serious claim for her own status as an influential scientist. Above all, though, Bodanis appreciates his heroine's refusal to be constrained by convention - she wouldn't "moderate" her passions - and that is why this tribute is so fitting and so much fun.
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