Note 124 — Chapter III

At the beginning of her correspondence with Gauss, Legendre and Lagrange Mlle. Germain concealed her sex under a pseudonym, "in order," as she declared, "to escape the ridicule attached to a woman devoted to science"—craignant le ridicule attaché au titre de femme savante. She, too, suffered from the widespread effects of Molière's Les Femmes Savantes, as had many a gifted woman before her time and as have many others of a much later date.