Mary Somerville's early contributions to the circulation of differential calculus (Q777865)

Mary Somerville's first important mathematical work was the expanded translation of Laplace's \textit{Mécanique céleste}, which appeared under the title \textit{Mechanism of the heavens} in 1831. The present paper focuses on Somerville's mathematical formation and her earlier work, which contributed to the acceptance and circulation of Leibnizian differential calculus. In 1811, she was awarded a silver medal for her solution of a problem from the Mathematical Repository, a journal of the Royal Military Academy in Marlow. The author deals with Somerville's published and unpublished solutions to problems posed in this journal. Some of them were formulated in the language of Leibnizian calculus, as opposed to the Newtonian calculus of fluxions and fluents common in Great Britain. The paper also discusses Somerville's relations and correspondence with William Wallace and other important figures of Western European science.