Strange Wilderness: The Lives of the Great Mathematicians | 
That feeling when the book you're reading references the next in your stack ...
I don't remember hearing that d'Alembert's birth mother was Mme de Tencin, but if I did it didn't stick with me because who the heck is Claudette de Tencin? I only encountered her earlier this year through her proto-gothic Memoirs of the Count of Comminges -- and my next read, her historical novel “The Siege of Calais.“
In Aczel's story she does not seem pleasant
swynn I should add: Tencin's “seeming unpleasant“ is not about her giving up for adoption an out-of-wedlock child. The unpleasantness comes a few paragraphs down (and not pictured), where Mme. de Tencin wants no contact with the child until she learns that he has become a famous mathematician -- at which point she tries to bring her “son“ into her social orbit. In Aczel's account, d'Alembert himself resented her self-serving interest. With justice say I (edited) 2mo
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so-so