Sophie Germain

Marie-Sophie Germain was born in Paris on 1 April 1776, into a world that had no place for women in mathematics. Her parents opposed her studies, but she read Euler in her father's library and began writing to Lagrange, Legendre, and Gauss as "Monsieur Le Blanc" - the ruse held until her insights made it irrelevant. She became a pioneer of elasticity theory and won the Paris Academy of Sciences' grand prize for her essay on the subject. Her contributions to Fermat's Last Theorem laid groundwork mathematicians built on for hundreds of years. Gauss recommended an honorary degree before her death from breast cancer on 27 June 1831, but it never came. A century later, Paris named a street and a girls' school in her memory, and the Academy established the Sophie Germain Prize.