Final Years
In 1829 Germain learned she had breast cancer. Despite the pain, she continued to work. In 1831 Crelle's Journal published her paper on the curvature of elastic surfaces and “a note about finding y and z in ." And American University's Gray records, “She also published in Annales de chimie et de physique an examination of principles which led to the discovery of the laws of equilibrium and movement of elastic solids." On June 27 of 1831, she died in the house at 13 rue de Savoie.
Despite Germain's intellectual achievements, her death certificate lists her as a “rentière – annuitant” (property holder), not a “mathematicienne." But her work was not unappreciated by everyone. When the matter of honorary degrees came up at the University of Göttingen six years after Germain's death, Gauss lamented, “ proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something worthwhile in the most rigorous and abstract of the sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree."
Read more about this topic: Sophie Germain
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)