Marie-Prudence Plisson
Marie-Prudence Plisson [1]
a French female mathematician, celebrated in her time by her eccentricities, was born at Chartres Nov. 27, 1727. Her father was a magistrate. Her taste for learned pursuits kept her aloof from the world, and induced her to prefer single-blessedness to matrimonial bliss. Her quaint disposition soon engaged her in disputes with which her sex evidently ought to have nothing to do. She first made herself known by several pieces in prose and in verse, published by the newspapers of the time. In 1764 the question was agitated whether a child born ten months and ten days after the dissolution of the matrimonial tie was legitimate? Mlle. Plisson boldly intervened in this momentous debate, and attacked with no little vivacity the opinion of Lebos, Bertin, Antoine Petit, etc.: many were the epigrams darted at the female philosopher. There was a time when she took to observe with passionate curiosity the nature of the cat, and comparing notes with all the naturalists who had written anything about it. She undertook to write the physiology of this interesting animal. "What animal," she says, in one of her pamphlets, "is more common, more at hand to be examined by educated people, than the cat?" Her library was remarkable in every respect. She died Dec. 17, 1788. Mile. Plisson left, Odes sur la Vie champetre (1750): — Projet pour soulager les Pauvres de la Campagne (Chartres, 1758): — Recherches sur la Du-ee de la Grossesse (Amsterdam, 1765): — — La Promenade de Province, Nouvelle, avec les Voyages d'Oronasis dans ‘ Ile de Bienveillance et dans la Planete de Mercure (Paris, 1783, 12mo): — and Maximes morales d'un Philosophe Chretien (Paris, 1783, 16mo). — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. G é neral é, 40, 486.
