One of eighteenth-century France's most significant women intellectuals, Mme. du Châtelet was also notable for her facility with languages, her athletic ability, her success at gambling, and her deep intellectual and emotional relationship with Voltaire, who left Paris with her when threatened with prosecution for his Lettres Philosophiques (1734) and with whom Mme. du Châtelet openly carried on an affair of several years duration. Du Châtelet left behind a substantial body of work, both original and translations of literary, scientific, philosophical, and mathematical work by a wide range of prominent intellectuals. Of these her 1759 translation of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, was the most important and remained the only French translation of Newton's treatise for many years.