Talk:Sophie Germain

Request for photos of Sophie Germains' home
Hello, I need help with finding some pictures of Sophie Germains' home —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.183.232.205 (talk • contribs) 00:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Missing conditions
"if x, y, and z are integers, and x5 + y5 = z5 then either x, y, or z has to be divisible by five. " I think some conditions are omitted here. The nontrivial case has no solutions (see Fermat), so it appears to me quite meaningless to say that these non-existing solutions have to be divisible by 5. On the other hand, in the trivial case x=0 and y=z, none of them has to be divisable by 5. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.11.216.65 (talk • contribs) 06:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * in case you are not aware, the result known as 'fermat's last theorem' was not proved by fermat but by Andrew Wiles in 1995. therefore it was entirely meaningful for germain to prove that any possible solutions to x^5 + y^5 = z^5 must be divisible by 5 at the start of the nineteenth century. see Fermat's Last Theorem. hope this helps. Via strass 08:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Sophie Germain was born into a wealthy family and self taught herself from her dads books in his libary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.164.68.202 (talk • contribs) 19:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Theme
How did she do that math? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.106.252.2 (talk) 15:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 155.106.252.2 is very vague.

1808
We are told that Gauss's interests shifted to applied maths after 1808. Actually, he studied non-Euclidean geometry after 1808. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.27.16 (talk) 09:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC) It is hard to tell pure and applied maths from one another, anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.27.16 (talk) 10:03, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Blame the victim
"Because of her gender, she was unable to make a career out of mathematics, but worked independently throughout her life." If puritanism demands use of a social and cultural construct (gender) rather than the underlying biological determinant (sex) then so be it but neither was the cause of Sophie Germain's inability to undertake a career in mathematics. It was the prejudices of society, largely those of men, that denied her such a career. As a woman she was perfectly capable intellectually and physically to follow such a career, it was the physical obstruction of men that prevented her admittance to the relevant institutions. Chrysippo (talk) 11:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that's the point, it was just poorly worded, or perhaps poorly read. Boneyard90 (talk) 06:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Undefined variable
In Sophie_Germain, there is an undefined "N". I should imagine that it should be a whole number. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.244.183.112 (talk) 09:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * N is not undefined in this case. The equation is in a subsection under "Later work in number theory". Number theory deals only with integers. In mathematics N is often used to represent integers, while a variable like X would be used otherwise. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:56, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If N=0, P=1. 1 is not now treated as a prime.
 * Thanks, It turns out there is more to it than simply N. It did need a definition and I've added "(N any positive integer not divisible by 3)". StarryGrandma (talk) 18:46, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Chladni vibration figures award
Petrovich 1999 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30053914) states Germain won the prize for calculating Chladni vibration figures, and she was the only contest left. However, this link gives a different account, where the other competitors '.. prisoners of the ruling paradigm, consideration of the underlying molecular structure theorized for materials. The mathematical methodologies appropriate to the molecular view could not cope with the problem.' Jonpatterns (talk) 20:36, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

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Osen unreliable
This article has approximately 7 footnotes (some repeated multiple times) sourced to Osen 1974. Osen was not careful about the provenance of her claims and cannot be considered a reliable source; see Talk:Hypatia for a more detailed discussion of this issue. Can we work to eliminate this reference and base everything on better sources, please? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 20 May 2018 (UTC)