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the number theory she was inspired by Adrien-Marie Legendre
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In 1804 she initiated a correspondence with Gauss under her male pseudonym
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Gauss only learned of her true identity when Germain, fearing for Gauss’s safety as a result of the French occupation of Hannover in 1807
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In 1811 Germain submitted an anonymous memoir, but the prize was not awarded
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In 1816 Germain met Joseph Fourier,
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Meanwhile Germain had actively revived her interest in number theory and in 1819 wrote to Gauss outlining her strategy for a general solution to Fermat’s last theorem,
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During the 1820s she worked on generalizations of her research
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Her third memoir, with which she finally won the prize, treated vibrations of general curved as well as plane surfaces and was published privately in 1821.
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Her result first appeared in 1825 in a supplement to the second edition of Legendre’s Théorie des nombres.
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She died cause of breast cancer
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The theorem was proved for all cases by the English mathematician Andrew Wiles in 1995
