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Hi Anonymous,
http://www.missouri.edu/~cst398/fer…
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/w…
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/ge…
Sophie Germain was one of the few women mathematicians of her time.
Her story is both interesting and inspiring for many an aspiring mathematician.Germain was born in France in 1776.
At this point in history, women were certainly not encouraged to study mathematics, and they were generally shunned from the mathematical world.
Germain developed an interest for mathematics when she read a story about the Greek mathematician Archimedes.
According to the story, Archimedes was so enthralled by a geometric figure that he did not pay attention to a Roman soldier who was questioning him.
As a result of Archimedes' inaction, the soldier killed him.
This account led Germain to believe that mathematics must be extraordinarily interesting if someone could be that engrossed in it.
Germain then took it upon herself to begin studying the bane of Archimedes.
She acquired the works of Newton and other great mathematicians and studied calculus, the theory of numbers, and other areas of mathematics.
Even though she showed great promise in her studies, her father was not too excited that his daughter was taken to study a subject that was not becoming of ladies.
In order to discourage her pursuit of mathematics, Germain's father took away her clothes, candles, and any source of heat so that she could not study at night while everyone else slept.
Even with the distraction of the cold, Germain continued to work on her mathematics by keeping a secret stash of candles and using her bed clothes to keep her from freezing.
Eventually, Germain's father accepted his daughter's first love and began funding her research.
According to Sophie Germain's first biographer, an Italian mathematician named Libri, is the source of two stories told about Germain that seem to frame her personality. As a 13-year-old, while talk of the Revolution swirled in her household, she withdrew to her father's library. There she read about Archimedes, so engrossed in his mathematical musings that he ignored a Roman invader of Syracuse, who thereupon killed him. She may have seen in Archimedes' mathematics "an environment where she too could live untouched by the confusion of social reality.She studied mathematics on her own, and Libri relates that her parents were so opposed to her behavior that she took to studying at night. They responded by leaving her fire unlit and taking her candles. Sophie studied anyway, swaddled in blankets, by the light of smuggled candles.
On the establishment in 1795 of the Ecole Polytechnique, which women could not attend, Germain befriended students and obtained their lecture notes. She submitted a memoir to the mathematician J. L. Lagrange under a male student's name. Lagrange saw talent in the work, sought out the author, and was bowled over to discover it had been written by a woman. She continued to study, corresponding with leading mathematicians of the day.
--Sophie Germain Primes
A prime number n such that 2n+1 is also prime is now called a Sophie Germain prime. Mathematicians are intrigued by finding large numbers, especially large prime numbers. The record for the largest known Sophie Germain prime (as of August 2001) is 109433307•266452-1, a number with 20013 digits.
There actually are applications for Sophie Germain primes in number theory and even in cryptology for digital signatures based on the Diffie-Hellman key agreement algorithm, so finding large Sophie Germain primes is actually a worthwhile pursuit.
Here's another record. The largest palindromic Sophie Germain prime is the following 1047 digit number found by Harvey Dubner:
n = 10...05321812350...10
where each ... gap represents 516 additional 0's. But there's an aesthetic problem with this number -- 2n+1 is prime, but is not a palindrome! So here's a final record, also found by Dubner:
n = 1919191918090908081808090908191919191
p = 2n+1 = 3838383836181816163616181816383838383
r = 2p+1 = 7676767672363632327232363632767676767
All three of these numbers are prime and all three are palindromes! Both n and p are therefore Sophie Germain primes. It is impossible, however, to have a sequence n, p, r of three Sophie Germain primes that are all palindromes because 2r+1 would always end in 5 in such a sequence and thus would not be a prime.Learn more about Germain's primes at sites below:
http://primes.utm.edu/glossary/page…
http://ascot.pl/th/Fourier5/Sophie-…
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Hi there,
Hope this site may help you:
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/ge…
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/…
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Sophie…
http://www.geocities.com/mathladies…
Good Luck!!!
(Rated by 3 Council Members)
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Sophie Germain's (April 1776 - June 1831) interest in mathematics began during the French Revolution when she was 13 years old.
She is best known for her work in number theory and the theory of elasticity (mathematical physics).
Sophie was a middle class female who went against the wishes of her family and the social prejudices of the time to become a highly recognized mathematician. She began teaching herself mathematics using the books in her father's library.
Germain proved that if x, y, and z are integers and if x^5 + y^5 = z^5 then either x, y, or z must be divisible by 5. Germain's theorem is a major step toward proving Fermat's last theorem for the case where n equals 5" (Dalmedico 119). Fermat's last theorem says that if x, y, z, and n are integers then x^n + y^n = z^n cannot be solved for any n greater than 2.
She was the first woman not related to a member by marriage to attend Academie des Sciences (French Academy of Sciences) meetings. Also she was the first woman invited to attend sessions at the Institut de France, the highest honor that this famous body ever conferred on a woman.
Sophie Germain was a revolutionary. She battled against the social prejudices of the era and a lack of formal training in order to become a celebrated mathematician. She died of breast canver when she was 55 before she could receive an honorary degree from the University of Gottengen.
Check the following websites in which you can find intersting facts about Germain's life.
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/w…
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/…
http://womenshistory.about.com/libr…
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1.Sophie Germain was a born mathematician and used a pseudonym "M. Le Blanc"
2. She proved that if x, y, and z are integers and if x^5 + y^5 = z^5 then either x, y, or z must be divisible by 5. Germain's theorem is a major step toward proving Fermat's last theorem for the case where n equals 5.
3. first woman not related to a member by marriage to attend Academie des Sciences meetings
4. First woman invited to attend sessions at the Institut de France
5. If both p and 2p+1 are prime, then p is a Sophie Germain prime
6.Germain died in June 1831, and her death certificate listed her not as mathematician or scientist, but rentier (property holder).
(Rated by 3 Council Members)
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