Monday 9th February, 6:30 pm, Aberystwyth University, Hugh Owen A14 Lecture Theatre.
Everyone is welcome to this free event.
Sophie Germain was born into a well-off bourgeois family in Paris. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 confined her to the family home and led her to take up the study of mathematics using the books in her father's library. She was highly regarded by Fourier, Gauss, Lagrange and Legendre and it was due to the influence of Gauss that the University of Gottingen awarded her a posthumous honorary degree, five years after her death.
She made significant contributions to differential geometry and the theory of elasticity, for which she was awarded the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Science. It was, however, her work in number theory, particularly her approach to Fermat's last theorem, that proved particularly prescient. New material has come to light in the past 20 years in the form of previously unknown manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Paris and the Biblioteca Moreniana in Florence.
The talk will include an outline of her life and career as well as a description of her work on Fermat's last theorem and an assessment of its significance.
Nothing more than GCSE knowledge of mathematics required!